Two year ago, my life changed forever. My  Kelsey and I welcomed our daughter Lelainto the world. Now, becoming a parentis an amazing experience. Your whole world changes over night. And all of your prioritieschange immediately. So fast that it makes it really difficultto process sometimes. Now, you also have to learna tremendous amount about being a parent like, for example,how to dress your child. (Laughter) This was new to me. This is an actual outfit, I thought this was a good idea. And even Lela knowsthat it's not a good idea. (Laughter) So there is so much to learn andso much craziness all at once. And to add to the craziness, Kelsey and I both work from home, we're entrepreneurs,we run our own businesses. So, Kelsey develops coursesonline for yoga teachers. I'm an author. And so, I'm working from home,Kelsey's working from home. We have an infantand we're trying to make sure that everything gets donethat needs done. And life is really, really busy. And a couple of weeksinto this amazing experience, when the sleep deprivationreally kicked in, like around week eight, I had this thought,and it was the same thought that parents across the ages,internationally, everybody has had this thought,which is: I am never going to havefree time ever again. (Laughter) Somebody said it's true. It's not exactly true, but it feels really, really truein that moment. And this was reallydisconcerning to me, because one of the things that I enjoy more than anything elseis learning new things. Getting curious about somethingand diving in and fiddling around and learning through trial and error. And eventually becoming pretty goodat something. And without this free time, I didn't know how I was ever going to do that ever again. And so, I'm a big geek, I want to keep learning things,I want to keep growing. And so what I've decided to do was, go to the library,and go to the bookstore, and look at what research says about how we learn and how we learn quickly. And I read a bunch of books,I read a bunch of websites. And tried to answer this question, how long does it taketo acquire a new skill? You know what I found? 10,000 hours! Anybody ever heard this? It takes 10,000 hours.If you want to learn something new, if you want to be good at it, it's going to take 10,000 hoursto get there. And I read this in book after book,in website after website. And my mental experienceof reading all of this stuff was like: No!! I don't have time!I don't have 10,000 hours. I am never going to be ableto learn anything new. Ever again.(Laughter) But that's not true. So, 10,000 hours, just to give youa rough order of magnitude, 10,000 hours is a full-time jobfor five years. That's a long time. And we've all had the experienceof learning something new, and it didn't take us anywhereclose to that amount of time, right? So, what's up? There's somethingkinda funky going on here. What the research says and what we expect,and have experiences, they don't match up. And what I found, here's the wrinkle: The 10,000 hour rule came out of studiesof expert-level performance. There's a professorat Florida State University, his name is K. Anders Ericsson. He is the originatorof the 10,00 hour rule. And where that came from is,he studied professional athletes, world class musicians,chess grand masters. All of this ultra competitive folksin ultra-high performing fields. And he tried to figure outhow long does it take to get to the topof those kinds of fields. And what he found is,the more deliberate practice, the more timethat those individuals spend practicing the elementsof whatever it is that they do, the more time you spend,the better you get. And the folks at the tippy topof their fields put in around 10,000 hours of practice. Now, we were talking about the gameof telephone a little bit earlier. Here's what happened: an author by the nameof Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book in 2007 called"Outliers: The Story of Success", and the central piece of that bookwas the 10,000 hour rule. Practice a lot, practice well,and you will do extremely well, you will reach the top of your field. So, the message, what Dr. Ericsson was actually saying is, it takes 10,000 hours to getat the top of an ultra competitive field in a very narrow subject,that's what that means. But here's what happened:ever since Outliers came out, immediately came out,reached the top of best seller lists, stayed there for three solid months. All of a sudden the 10,000 hour rulewas everywhere. And a society-wide game of telephonestarted to be played. So this message, it takes 10,000 hoursto reach the top of an ultra competitive field, became, it takes 10,000 hoursto become an expert at something, which became, it takes 10,000 hours to becomegood at something, which became, it takes 10,000 hoursto learn something. But that last statement,it takes 10,000 hours to learn something, is not true.It's not true. So, what the research actually says -- I spent a lot of time hereat the CSU library in the cognitive psychology stacks'cause I'm a geek. And when you actually lookat the studies of skill acquisition, you see over and overa graph like this. Now, researchers,whether they're studying a motor skill, something you do physicallyor a mental skill, they like to study thingsthat they can time. 'Cause you can quantify that, right? So, they'll give research participantsa little task, something that requiresphysical arrangement, or something that requireslearning a little mental trick, and they'll time how long a participanttakes to complete the skill. And here's what this graph says,when you start -- so when researchers gave participantsa task, it took them a really long time, 'cause it was newand they were horrible. With a little bit of practice,they get better and better and better. And that early part of practiceis really, really efficient. People get good at thingswith just a little bit of practice. Now, what's interesting to note is that, for skills that we want to learnfor ourselves, we don't care so much about time,right? We just care about how good we are,whatever good happens to mean. So if we relabel performance timeto how good you are, the graph flips, and you gethis famous and widely known, this is the learning curve. And the story of the learning curveis when you start, you're grossly incompetentand you know it, right? (Laughter) With a little bit of practice,you get really good, really quick. So that early level of improvementis really fast. And then at a certain pointyou reach a plateau, and the subsequent gamesbecome much harder to get, they take more time to get. Now, my question is,I want that, right? How long does it takefrom starting something and being grossly incompetentand knowing it to being reasonably good? In hopefully, as short a period of timeas possible. So, how long does that take? Here's what my research says: 20 hours. That's it.You can go from knowing nothing about any skill that you can think of. Want to learn a language?Want to learn how to draw? Want to learn how to juggleflaming chainsaws? (Laughter) If you put 20 hours of focuseddeliberate practice into that thing, you will be astounded. Astounded at how good you are. 20 hours is doable, that's about 45 minutes a dayfor about a month. Even skipping a couple days,here and there. 20 hours isn't that hard to accumulate. Now, there's a method to doing this. Because it's not like you can just startfiddling around for about 20 hours and expect these massive improvements. There's a way to practice intelligently. There's a way to practice efficiently, that will make sure that you investthose 20 hours in the most effective waythat you possibly can. And here's the method,it applies to anything: The first is to deconstruct the skill. Decide exactly what you wantto be able to do when you're done, and then look into the skilland break it down into smaller pieces. Most of the thingsthat we think of as skills are actually big bundles of skillsthat require all sorts of different things. The more you can break apart the skill, the more you're able to decide, what are the parts of this skillthat would actually help me get to what I want? And then you can practice those first. And if you practicethe most important things first, you'll be able to improveyour performance in the least amount of time possible. The second is, learn enoughto self correct. So, get three to five resourcesabout what it is you're trying to learn. Could be book, could be DVDs,could be courses, could be anything. But don't use those as a wayto procrastinate on practice. I know I do this, right? Get like 20 books about the topic,like, "I'm going to start learninghow to program a computer when I complete these 20 books". No. That's procrastination. What you want to dois learn just enough that you can actually practice and self correct or self editas you practice. So the learning becomesa way of getting better at noticingwhen you're making a mistake and then doing somethinga little different. The third is to remove barriersto practice. Distractions, television, internet. All of these thingsthat get in the way of you actually sitting downand doing the work. And the more you're able to usejust a little bit of willpower to remove the distractions thatare keeping you from practicing, the more likely you are to actuallysit down and practice, right? And the fourth is to practicefor at least 20 hours. Now, most skills have what I calla frustration barrier. You know, the grossly-incompetent-and-knowing-it part? That's really, really frustrating.We don't like to feel stupid. And feeling stupid is a barrier to us actually sitting down and doing the work. So, by pre-committing to practicingwhatever it is that you want to do for at least 20 hours, you will be able to overcomethat initial frustration barrier and stick with the practice long enoughto actually reap the rewards. That's it! It's not rocket science. Four very simple steps thatyou can use to learn anything. Now, this is easy to talkabout in theory, but it's more fun to talk aboutin practice. So one of the things that I've wantedto learn how to do for a long time is play the ukulele. Has anybody seenJake Shimabukuro's TEDTalk where he plays the ukuleleand makes it sound like -- he's like a ukulele god. It's amazing. I saw it, I was like,"That is so cool!" It's such a neat instrument.I would really like to learn how to play. And so I decidedthat to test this theory I wanted to put 20 hoursinto practicing ukulele and see where it got. And so the first thingabout playing the ukulele is, in order to practice,you have to have one, right? So, I got an ukulele and-- My lovely assistant? (Laughter) Thank you sir.I think I need the chord here. It's not just an ukulele,it's an electric ukulele. (Laughter) Yeah. So, the first couple hours are justlike the first couple hours of anything. You have to get the toolsthat you are using to practice. You have to make surethey're available. My ukulele didn't comewith strings attached. I had to figure outhow to put those on. Like, that's kind of important, right? And learning how to tune,learning how to make sure that all of the thingsthat need to be done in order to start practicingget done, right? Now, one of the things when I wasready to actually start practicing was I looked in online databasesand songbooks for how to play songs. And they say, okay, ukuleles, you canplay more than one string at a time, so you can play chords, that's cool, you are accompanying yourself,yay you. (Laughter) And when I started looking at songs, I had an ukulele chord bookthat had like hundreds of chords. Looking at this and"Wow, that's intimidating". But when you look at the actual songs, you see the same chordsover and over, right? As it turns out, playing the ukuleleis kind of like doing anything, There's a very small set of thingsthat are really important and techniques that you'll useall the time. And in most songsyou'll use four, maybe five chords, and that's it, that's the song. You don't have to know hundreds,as long as you know the four or the five. So, while I was doing my research, I found a wonderful little medleyof pop songs by a band called Axis of Awesome.(Whistles) -- Somebody knows it. -- And what Axis of Awesome saysis that you can learn, or you can play pretty muchany pop song of the past five decades, if you know four chords, and those chords are G, D, Em and C. Four chords pump outevery pop song ever, right? So I thought, this is cool! I would like to playevery pop song ever. (Laughter) So, that was the first songI decided to learn, and I would like to actuallyshare it with you. Ready? (Applause)Alright. (Music) (Singing)Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world, she took the midnight traingoing anywhere. I heard that you settled down,(Laughter) that you found a girl, that you're married now. Every night in my dreams(Laughter) I see you, I feel you, that is how I know you go on.(Laughter) I won't hesitate no more, no more.It cannot wait, I'm yours. 'Cause you were amazing,we did amazing things. If I could, then I would,I'd go wherever you will -- Can you feel the love tonight.(Laughter) I can't live with or without you. When I find myself -- When I find myself in times of trouble,mother Mary comes to me, Sometimes I feel like I don't have partner.No woman, no cry. Yeah mama, this surely is a dream. I come from a land down under.(Laughter) Once a jolly swagmancamped by a billabong. Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy,(Laughter) but here's my number, so call me Hey sexy lady, op, op, op, op,oppan gangnam style. (Laughter) It's time to say goodbye. Closing time, every new beginningcomes from some other beginning's end. (Singing and music ends)(Applause) Thank you, thank you. I love that song.(Laughter) And I have a secret to share with you. So, by playing that song for you, I just hit my twentieth hourof practicing the ukulele. (Applause)Thank you. And so it's amazing, pretty muchanything that you can think of, what do you want to do. The major barrier to learnsomething new is not intellectual, it's not the process of you learninga bunch of little tips or tricks or things. The major barrier's emotional.We're scared. Feeling stupid doesn't feel good, in the beginning of learninganything new you feel really stupid. So the major barrier's not intellectual,it's emotional. But put 20 hours into anything. It doesn't matter.What do you want to learn? Do you want to learn a language?Want to learn how to cook? Want to learn how to draw? What turns you on?What lights you up? Go out and do that thing.It only takes 20 hours. Have fun. (Applause)