How to learn anything you want

How many times have you wanted to teach yourself something or come up with an idea and stumbled at the first hurdle because you didn’t know how to start? What if, instead of giving up at this point you say to yourself, ‘I can figure that out’? There area lot of barriers in the way of teaching yourself something new but a lot of the blockages can be removed.

Removal of doubt that you can do it

Time — It is no secret that people feel short on time, making it the biggest barrier to learning new things. But if it is worth it you will make time. Anything you say you don’t have time for is not a priority for you. So once you have committed to giving it a go, how long does it take to teach youself something? According to Josh Kaufman, it is 20 hours.

In his TED Talk, ‘How to Learn Anything’ he breaks down his process of going from wanting to learn something to being competent enough to be able to do it; he showcases this by learning the ukulele. Just 45 minutes a day for a month, including some days off, will get you to your 20 hours. I am not suggesting you can become the world’s best at something in 20 hours but you can teach yourself a lot in that time.

‘It’s too hard’ — I come up against this excuse a lot and my view is that something being ‘too difficult’ is just an excuse, and not a reason to avoid starting. Take Benny Lewis for example, in ‘Ultralearning’, Scott H Young tells the story of how Benny Lewis mastered the process of learning a new language in…