Ten million people have watched a TED speaker accidentally destroy the entire online course industry.
He filmed the talk once at TEDxCSU and it has been on YouTube ever since.
MasterClass charges $200 a year to teach a diluted version of what he covered in 20 minutes for free.
His name is Josh Kaufman. He is the author of "The Personal MBA" and "The First 20 Hours," and one of the few writers who has publicly proved Malcolm Gladwell's ten thousand hour rule is misapplied.
For over a decade he has taught the same three-step method for learning any new skill in a month.
His entire framework fits on a napkin.
The ten thousand hour rule is about world-class experts, not about you. Twenty hours takes you from grossly incompetent to good enough. Deconstruct the skill. Read three books, not twenty. Remove every barrier to practice. Do 45 minutes a day for a month.
That last rule alone has probably cost the online course industry a hundred million dollars in unopened lifetime memberships.
"The first 20 hours of any skill are the ones that pay for all the ones that follow."
That is a paraphrase Kaufman returns to across the talk. He learned the ukulele in the same twenty hours to prove the point on stage.
Founders buy $10,000 online programs on productivity and never open lecture three. Parents pay $500 a month for their kid's music lessons and never let the kid practice past the first plateau.
The talk is free on YouTube. Kaufman's book "The First 20 Hours" is under twenty dollars on Amazon.
Kaufman still writes and lectures. Almost none of the millions who watched have finished a single twenty-hour block on a new skill since.
The method is free. The willingness to actually spend 45 minutes a day on the skill you keep postponing is the entire edge.
As a man, you will miss a lot of opportunity if you are shy. The job goes to the guy who spoke up. The girl goes home with the guy who approached. The deal closes for the man who asked. Shyness feels safe but it is one of the most expensive habits you can have. Every door that never opened, every connection that never happened, every version of your life that stayed out of reach — most of it traces back to moments you stayed quiet when you should have moved. Cure the shyness. Everything else gets easier.
A reminder from Atomic Habits by James Clear:
“It doesn't make sense to continue wanting something if you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don't want to live the lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire. To crave the result but not the process is to guarantee disappointment.”
I’m in love with this sentence:
“The degree to which a person can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth he can accept about himself without running away.”
These Brown Sepoys never miss a chance to defame India at any level.
He posts hateful comments on Vietnamese news channe &
Vietnamese Facebook groups every day, even when the topic has no connection with India.
Criticism is fine, but spreading hate of your own country? @aravind