Let’s face it. This book finished after 40 pages. The rest of the book is a log of what the author learned over the course of the year, diving through needless detail for each one: yoga, programming, ukulele, windsurfing, touch typing. Unless you’re already learning these in a beginner level, then none of this will be useful for you.
For each, Kaufman gave a detailed description and history of the discipline, but I honestly couldn’t care less about the history of yoga, ukulele chords, how the QWERTY keyboard came about and all the other unnecessary shit that he managed to squeeze in. Like I said, a lot of useless fluff.
The principles of the 20 hours is really quite basic: focus, deconstruct, equip, focus even more, cut distractions out, get feedback, more practise. The 20 hours can be stretched over weeks if necessary, depending on your work life balance.
Readers like me have every right to feel ripped off, as there is not much in the way of skill acquisition, but most of the chapters are anecdotal. For most of these, in the first 20 hours, you manage to get by to a mediocre level in whatever he tried to learn. There’s probably more business books out there like this, which promises so much but deliver so little. It is the Malcolm Gladwell feels all over again (eughhh).
You can just watch his Ted Talk in YouTube instead of spending your money on this book. Actually wait, don’t do that. Watch cat videos instead.
