Learning new skills will take you 10,000 hours!

This is what I used to believe when I heard about 10,000 hours rule for the first time in high school. So whenever I’m going to learn a new skill at this time, I always wonder that will I want to spend 10,000 hours learning this skill or not?

Then, I used to ignore learning a lot of valuable skills at that time because of this limited belief that I will not have enough time to learn them.

After 6 years to learn and experiencing a lot of new things in life, finally, I recognized that it doesn’t take that much 10,000 hours for someone to learn a skill.

I get the misunderstanding about the meaning of 10,000 hours rule for learning new skill — And I need to admit it.

The real meaning of 10,000 hours of learning new skills should be understood at the expert level. It means that you will understand very deeply about this area or that skill after 10,000 hours of working on it. But for learning a new skill that you can apply in life, basically, it just takes around 2 weeks.

Yes! Just only two weeks to focus on it, and spend at least one to two hours each day to learn about it, so you can use it and apply this skill in your life. It will not be at the expert’s level but it will be good enough for the standard level or even intermediate level.

And there are only two things that you really need to do to achieve your goal of learning a new skill in 2 weeks. These are:

1. To learn new skills quickly, let: Learning as a child

Let remember about the time when you are a kid; how do you feel, and what do you do when you learn something new?

Kid feels very curious about the new things they learn. They learn by trying and failing, like the way kids learn the skill of riding a bicycle.

They take the small bicycle with 4 wheels to keep the balance at first.

Then they use 2 wheels bicycles to practice and fall so many times before they can control how to ride the bike.

And they don’t care about how many times they fail, or how many supported wheels they need to use before they can ride a bike properly. They are ready to do anything to learn the riding skill.

It will be the same way we want to approach a new skill. Let always feel exciting to try and fail with it, because this is an important step to help you learn something new. Nobody can be successful for the first time they do something.

The more failure you have, the closer to master the skill you are.

But the most important here is your attitude. Always keep it positive and full of energy when you learn the skill. Because if you don’t enjoy what you learn, you can’t learn and grow it to the level that you want or even will stop it just before you can control the skill.

In addition, as a kid, when we learn something new, we always feel curious to learn about all the aspects of things that we want to know. As when I still remember the first time I learn to drive my bicycle, I spent hours observing other older’s friends ride the bike; I asked them to teach me how to keep balance, how to bump the wheels if no air, how to fix the chain if it doesn’t work, etc.

Anything related to the bicycle or I believe that can help me to ride better, I all want to learn about.

It also applies the same way when you want to learn a new skill, let be curious about anything related to this skill and think as you don’t know anything about it before.

This is how you can learn new skills quickly!

Because when we grow up, we usually approach the new skill we want to learn by our conscious mind with the knowledge we used to hear or know about it.

But if you want to boost the maximum ability to adapt to a new skill in 2 weeks, I need you to forget everything you know about that skill before.

Let imagine you as a white paper that doesn’t know anything about this topic. Then, start to approach the skill as the first time you learn how to ride a bicycle when you are a kid.

Let yourself feel free to learn anything you can relate to this skill without any pre-assessment. By doing this way, your mind can learn the best things about this skill and help you to form this skill in just two weeks’ time.

2. To learn new skills quickly, let: Learn then teach again

Before I just think that learning more means I can remember more. So I spend time reading as much as I can about the skill I want to learn.

I don’t say that reading more is not good, but if you just read and don’t apply what you learn, it doesn’t make sense. Because our brain always has two sources: input and output.

If you just have one of them, you will not complete the process of learning a new skill effectively. You need both sources. And “input” here means the knowledge you get in your mind about the skill while “output” means the things you do to develop your skill in real life.

And the best way to do with your “output” is by teaching your skill to others. I used to worry that I need to learn to be master the skill before I can really teach someone about it.

But this is not true. The idea here is you want to grow your skill and a lot of people out there want to learn this new skill like you but they still have no idea how to do this. Therefore, even if you just start for the first day, you already get more knowledge about this skill than the person who starts to learn this skill at day zero.

These kinds of people in your target audience, can be your friends, your siblings, family members, or anyone else who you want to share with.

For me, this is my family.

It means that whenever I learned a new skill in the daytime, I always spend time in the evening when I stay with my family to share with them what I learned.

It helps me to remind the lessons I learned about this skill twice — one in the morning by myself when I learn and take note about it; and the second time is when I share with my family.

And when I share what I learned, I use my own language to share with others.

This is a very important step when you use the things you learned and turn them into your own version. By doing this, your brain will establish a part of the brain to record and remember the way you approach the skill.

It helps you to remember better about the topic you share and become more interested in learning this new skill when the skill now is understood and used by your way.

These are 2 steps that I did to learn the new skills for the last couple of years. By doing this way, it helps me to develop many valuable skills that are related to my career and improve my life quality, such as: learn how to write blogs, learning to make videos, digital marketing, dancing, magic tricks,…

And I believe that these 2 steps will be a great foundation for you as well when you want to learn new skills quickly that you have never tried before. Don’t feel worried or doubt about yourself when starting something new.

Just use a fresh mindset without any concern and be curious like a kid to learn. Then applying what you learn to teach others again to help them know new skills while you can enhance your understanding of this skill.

A fresh mind to learn and a passion to share are the best steps for you to learn a new valuable skill.

If you want to read more about personal development topics, let check it out at “Wiki Personal Development”.