学会一个新的技能需要多久？很多人都在说10000小时法则，也就是说当你持续刻意练习一件事情，当到达一万小时当时候，你基本上就已经可以精通了，你觉得呢？
The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything
Josh Kaufman
Hi everyone. Two year ago, my life changed forever. My wife Kelsey and I welcomed our daughter Lela into the world. Now, becoming a parent is an amazing experience.
大家好，两年前，我的生活完全改变了。我和我的太太凯尔希迎来了我们的女儿莱拉。为人父母是一种奇妙的体验。
Your whole world changes over night. And all of your priorities change immediately. So fast that it makes it really difficult to process sometimes.
一夜之间，一切都改变了。你所有的计划全部被打乱。速度之快，让人措手不及。
Now, you also have to learn a tremendous amount about being a parent like, for example, how to dress your child. This was new to me.
然后你会有很多东西要学。比如，该如何打扮你的宝宝。对我而言这是新的挑战。
This is an actual outfit, I thought this was a good idea. And even Lela knows that it's not a good idea. So there is so much to learn and so much craziness all at once.
这是我搭配的一套，我觉得还挺不错的。但是好像连莱拉都看不上。要学的还很多，千头万绪的。
And to add to the craziness, Kelsey and I both work from home, we're entrepreneurs, we run our own businesses. So, Kelsey develops courses online for yoga teachers. I'm an author.
更糟的是，凯尔希和我都在家工作，我俩都做生意，有自己的公司。凯尔希为瑜伽教练做在线课程开发。我是一名作家。
And so, I'm working from home, Kelsey's working from home. We have an infant and we're trying to make sure that everything gets done that needs done.
因此，我俩都在家上班。我们有婴儿要照顾，我们竭尽全力把每件事都做好。
And life is really, really busy. And a couple of weeks into this amazing experience, when the sleep deprivation really 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 have free time ever again. Somebody said it's true.
日子过得非常忙碌。这种奇妙的体验持续几周过后，睡眠不足的弊端开始显现，大概是在第八周的时候，我产生了一种想法，我觉得这种想法无论你是哪国人，无论你多大年龄，只要你当父母了，都会有：我此生再无自由之日了。有人说确实如此。
It's not exactly true, but it feels really, really true in that moment. And this was really disconcerting to me, because one of the things that I enjoy more than anything else is learning new things. Getting curious about something and diving in and fiddling around and learning through trial and error. And eventually becoming pretty good at something. And without this free time, I didn't know how I was ever going to do that ever again.
这可能有点绝对，但在当时的情境下，我真的是这么想的。这让我很抓狂，因为我最喜欢的事情就是学习新事物。对某件事产生兴趣，然后一头扎进去，不断尝试，不断学习。最后变得比较擅长。但是，如果没有自由支配的时间，我真不知该如何继续我的这个爱好。
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 take to acquire a new skill?
没错，我是个死宅，我想持续学习，不断成长。于是我做出一个决定，去图书馆和书店寻找研究资料，看我们该如何学习，如何快速学习。我读了很多书，也浏览了不少网站。想搞清楚一个问题，掌握一项新的技能需要多久？
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 hours to get there. And I read this in book after book, in website after website.
知道我找到的答案是什么吗？1万小时！你们听过这说法吗？要花1万小时。如果你想学点新东西，并且变得很擅长，要用掉你1万小时的时间。我在书本上，网站上不停地读到这一点。
And my mental experience of 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 able to learn anything new. Ever again. But that's not true. So, 10,000 hours, just to give you a rough order of magnitude, 10,000 hours is a full-time job for five years. That's a long time.
我的内心是崩溃的，我的心在呐喊：不！我没有这么多时间！我上哪儿找1万小时？我再也学不会新东西了。永远没戏了。但事实不是这样的。1万小时是什么概念，打个比方，1万小时相当于5年的全职工作。那是一段很长的时间。
And we've all had the experience of learning something new, and it didn't take us anywhere close to that amount of time, right? So, what's up? There's something kinda 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 studies of expert-level performance.
我们都学过新东西，但谁也没有花过那么长的时间，对吧？那这是怎么回事呢？有点不对劲啊。研究结果和我们的期望、我们的经验并不相符。我发现，问题在于：1万小时定律针对的是专家。
There's a professor at Florida State University, his name is K. Anders Ericsson. He is the originator of the 10,000 hour rule. And where that came from is, he studied professional athletes, world class musicians, chess grand masters. All of this ultra-competitive folks in ultra-high performing fields.
佛罗里达州立大学有一位教授，叫做安德斯.埃里克森。1万小时定律是他最先提出的。而这一定律的研究对象，是职业运动员，世界级音乐家和象棋大师。都是竞争激烈的领域，他们又是其中的佼佼者。
And he tried to figure out how long it takes to get to the top of those kinds of fields. And what he found is, the more deliberate practice, the more time that those individuals spend practicing the elements of whatever it is that they do, the more time you spend, the better you get. And the folks at the tippy top of their fields put in around 10,000 hours of practice. Now, we were talking about the game of telephone a little bit earlier.
他试图弄清楚，在这些领域，登上巅峰需要多久。他发现，练习得越多，在各自的领域花费的时间越多，最后取得的成绩就越大。那些站在最巅峰的人都花了差不多1万小时来练习。这事儿其实就是个以讹传讹的故事。
Here's what happened: an author by the name of Malcolm Gladwell Wrote a book in 2007 called "Outliers: The Story of Success", and the central piece of that book was 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 get at the top of an ultra-competitive field in a very narrow subject, that's what that means.
事情是这样的：有一个作家叫马尔科姆.格拉德威尔在2007年写了本书叫《异类：成功秘诀》，核心内容就是1万小时定律。多练习，好好练习，你就能成功，成为本领域的佼佼者。其实，埃里克森博士真正想说的是，要想在一个竞争非常激烈的特定领域里成为佼佼者，需要花费1万小时的时间。
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.
但《异类》这本书一经出版，就迅速冲上了畅销榜首，并保持了整整三个月。
All of a sudden the 10,000 hour rule was everywhere. And a society-wide game of telephone started to be played. So this message, it takes 10,000 hours to reach the top of an ultra-competitive field, became, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, which became, it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something, which became, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something.
1万小时定律一夜之间家喻户晓。全民开始以讹传讹。“在竞争激烈的领域登顶需要1万小时”这条信息，变成了“精通某件事需要1万小时”，之后变成了，“想要擅长某事，需要花1万小时”，之后变成了，“学习一个新东西需要花1万小时”。
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 here at the CSU library in the cognitive psychology stacks because I'm a geek. And when you actually look at the studies of skill acquisition, you see over and over a graph like this.
但最后这条结论：学习一个新东西需要花1万小时，是不对的，大错特错。实际上，这项研究说的是——我在科罗拉多州立大学图书馆认知心理学区域查了很多资料，因为我是死宅嘛。当你在查找关于习得技能的研究成果时，你经常会看到这张图。
Now, researchers, whether they're studying a motor skill, something you do physically or a mental skill, they like to study things that they can time. Because you can quantify that, right? So, they'll give research participants a little task, something that requires physical arrangement, or something that requires learning a little mental trick, and they'll time how long a participant takes to complete the skill.
研究者们，无论他们研究的是运动技能，也就偏体力的（技能），还是偏脑力的技能，他们都喜欢用可以计时的事情为例。因为可以量化计算，对吧？于是，他们给研究参与者一个小任务，有些需要体力解决，有些需要动点脑筋，他们来统计参与者需要多长时间完成。
And here's what this graph says, when you start -- so when researchers gave participants a task, it took them a really long time, cause it was new and they were horrible. With a little bit of practice, they get better and better and better. And that early part of practice is really, really efficient. People get good at things with just a little bit of practice.
这个图说明，刚开始的时候——研究者给参与者的任务，需要很长时间才能完成，因为以前没做过，他们心里又没底。但经过一段时间练习后，他们会越做越好。早期的练习真的非常非常有效。人只需要一点点练习，就可以把事情做得不错。
Now, what's interesting to note is that, for skills that we want to learn for 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 time to how good you are, the graph flips, and you get his famous and widely known, this is the learning curve.
有一点很有意思，对于那些我们真心想学的技能，我们就不会在乎花多少时间，对吧？我们只在乎能学得多好，无论这个好的标准是什么。如果我们把练习时间换成擅长程度，图表就倒过来了，就成为了那条著名的学习曲线。
And the story of the learning curve is when you start, you're grossly incompetent and you know it, right? With a little bit of practice, you get really good, really quick. So that early level of improvement is really fast. And then at a certain point you reach a plateau, and the subsequent games become much harder to get, they take more time to get. Now, my question is, I want that, right?
学习曲线告诉我们，作为初学者，我们都极烂，而且我们也知道自己极烂。只要一点练习，你很快就会做得很好。因此早期的进步是非常大的。之后在一个特定时间点，你进入了平台期，之后进步就越来愈难，要花更多的时间。我想了解的就是那个，对吧？
How long does it take from starting something and being grossly incompetent and knowing it to being reasonably good? In hopefully, as short a period of time as 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.
从一开始学，水平极差到比较入门，需要多长时间？理想状态，当然是越短越好。那么，到底需要多久呢？我的研究结果是：20小时。没错。你可以从什么都不懂的菜鸟，到学会任何一种技能。
Want to learn a language? Want to learn how to draw? Want to learn how to juggle flaming chainsaws? If you put 20 hours of focused deliberate practice into that thing, you will be astounded.
想学一门外语？想学会画画？想学会怎么耍电锯？如果你拿出20个小时，全情投入一件事情，你会感到震惊的。
Astounded at how good you are. 20 hours is doable, that's about 45 minutes a day for about a month. Even skipping a couple days, here and there.
震惊于自己居然能这么厉害。20个小时并不多，也就是每天45分钟，坚持1个月。中间空出几天也没关系。
20 hours isn't that hard to accumulate. Now, there's a method to doing this. Because it's not like you can just start fiddling 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 invest those 20 hours in the most effective way that you possibly can.
积累20个小时并不难。下面是具体办法。并不是说你瞎玩20个小时，就能精通某件事。还是要用恰当的方法进行练习。要练习得有效率，这才能保证你投入的20个小时是最有效的。
And here's the method, it applies to anything: The first is to deconstruct the skill. Decide exactly what you want to be able to do when you're done, and then look into the skill and break it down into smaller pieces. Most of the things that we think of as skills are actually big bundles of skills that require all sorts of different things.
下面就来介绍方法，它适用于任何事情：首先将你想学的技能进行分解。想好你最后要达成什么效果，然后将技能分解成一个个小的部分。绝大部分我们称之为技能的事情实际上是由许多不同的技能组成的。
The more you can break apart the skill, the more you're able to decide, what are the parts of this skill that would actually help me get to what I want? And then you can practice those first. And if you practice the most important things first, you'll be able to improve your performance in the least amount of time possible.
你把技能分解得越细，你就越能决定，这项技能里面的哪些部分能帮我达成目标。你就可以先练习这些。如果你先练习最重要的事情，你就可以在最短的时间内最大限度地提高自己。
The second is, learn enough to self-correct. So, get three to five resources about what it is you're trying to learn. Could be book, could be DVDs, could be courses, and could be anything. But don't use those as a way to procrastinate on practice.
第二点，要有一定的（理论）学习，能帮你自我纠错。要找到3-5种学习资源。可以是书，可以是DVD，可以是课程，什么都行。但是不要因为这个而推迟练习。
I know I do this, right? Get like 20 books about the topic, like, "I'm going to start learning how to program a computer when I complete these 20 books". No. That's procrastination. What you want to do is learn just enough that you can actually practice and self-correct or self-edit as you practice. So the learning becomes a way of getting better at noticing when you're making a mistake and then doing something a little different.
我就这么干过。买了20本相关的书籍，说“我要先看完这20本书，然后开始学习编程。”这样不对。这就是拖延。（理论）学习不用太多，能支撑你开始练习就可以了并在练习过程中自我纠错，自我调整。因此（理论）学习能帮你进步，能在你犯错时提醒你然后进行调整。
The third is to remove barriers to practice. Distractions, television, internet. All of these things that get in the way of you actually sitting down and doing the work. And the more you're able to use just a little bit of willpower to remove the distractions that are keeping you from practicing, the more likely you are to actually sit down and practice, right?
第三点，是要排除干扰。电视，网络，所有的干扰。这些东西都会阻止你坐下来开始练习。你的毅力越大，越能排除干扰，你就越能坐下来，认真练习，不是吗？
And the fourth is to practice for at least 20 hours. Now, most skills have what I call a 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.
第四点就是要练习至少20小时。我觉得，（学习）大部分技能都存在“沮丧障碍”。就是“我很菜鸟而且我自己知道”的阶段。真的很不爽。谁也不愿意觉得自己蠢。而觉得自己蠢真的会阻止我们坐下来安心练习。
So, by pre-committing to practicing whatever it is that you want to do for at least 20 hours, you will be able to overcome that initial frustration barrier and stick with the practice long enough to actually reap the rewards.
所以，无论你想做什么，先给自己定个目标先练习个20小时，你就能渡过最初那段很受挫的时期从而（有信心）将练习持续下去，直到获得回报。
That's it! It's not rocket science. Four very simple steps that you can use to learn anything. Now, this is easy to talk about in theory, but it's more fun to talk about in practice. So one of the things that I've wanted to learn how to do for a long time is play the ukulele.
就是这样！并不复杂。学习任何东西都可以按这四步来。好的，理论说起来总是很容易，其实说到练习会更加有意思。有件乐器我想学已经很久了，就是尤克里里琴。
Has anybody seen Jake Shimabukuro's TED Talk? TED where he plays the ukulele and makes it sound like -- he's like a ukulele god. It's amazing.
你们看没看过杰克岛袋的演讲他弹奏尤克里里，那声音简直——他就像尤克里里之神。非常精彩。
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 decided that to test this theory I wanted to put 20 hours into practicing ukulele and see where it got. And so the first thing about playing the ukulele is, in order to practice, you have to have one, right? So, I got an ukulele and -- My lovely assistant? Thank you sir. I think I need the chord here. It's not just an ukulele, it's an electric ukulele.
我看了之后觉得，“哇，太酷了！”非常精妙的一种乐器。我非常想学。于是我决定验证一下我的理论花20小时来练习尤克里里看效果如何。演奏尤克里里的第一件事，想要演奏，你先得有一把琴，对吧？于是，我弄了一把尤克里里，有请我可爱的助理。谢谢你，先生。我想我还需要一根弦。这可不是普通的尤克里里，是插电的。
Yeah. So, the first couple hours are just like the first couple hours of anything. You have to get the tools that you are using to practice. You have to make sure they're available. My ukulele didn't come with strings attached. I had to figure out how 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 things that need to be done in order to start practicing get done, right?
最开始的几个小时就像其他所有事情一样。你要把所需的工具准备好。确保它们能正常使用。我的尤克里里最开始是没有装弦的。我要搞清楚如何把它装好。这非常重要，对吧。还要学习调音，准备好一切，确保在开始练习前，一切就绪。
Now, one of the things when I was ready to actually start practicing was I looked in online databases and songbooks for how to play songs. And they say, okay, ukuleles, you can play more than one string at a time, so you can play chords, that's cool, you are accompanying yourself, yay you.
当一切准备就绪，正式开始练习前我上网找了各种数据和歌本。上面说，哦，尤克里里，你可以弹奏不止一根弦，可以演奏和弦，很棒，你可以自己给自己伴奏。
And when I started looking at songs, I had an ukulele chord book that 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 chords over and over, right?
我开始看歌本，我还有一本尤克里里的和弦书，里面有上百种和弦。我当时就傻了，“哇，这太恐怖了。”但是当你真正看歌本的时候，你会发现相同的和弦总是重复出现，对吧？
As it turns out, playing the ukulele is kind of like doing anything, there’s a very small set of things that are really important and techniques that you'll use all the time. And in most songs you'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 medley of pop songs by a band called Axis of Awesome.
其实，弹尤克里里就跟做其他事一样，有一些固定的模式，它们非常重要你会一直用到它们。在大部分歌曲里，你会用到4-5种和弦，那就够了，就能弹出一首歌了。掌握这4-5种和弦就够了，没必要学会几百种。在学习过程中，我发现了一首不错的混音曲，由许多流行歌曲组成，来自“惊奇轴心”乐队。
Somebody knows it. -- And what Axis of Awesome says is that you can learn, or you can play pretty much any pop song of the past five decades, if you know four chords, and those chords are G, D, Em and C. Four chords pump out every pop song ever, right? So I thought, this is cool! I would like to play every pop song ever. So, that was the first song I decided to learn, and I would like to actually share it with you. Ready? Alright.
看来有人知道他们，“惊奇轴心”认为，我们可以学会可以弹奏，过去50年几乎所有的流行歌曲，只要你能掌握4种和弦，就是G和弦、D和弦、Em和弦和C和弦。每首流行歌曲都由这4种和弦组成。我觉得这太酷了。我想学会弹所有的流行歌曲。于是我决定先学这一首，然后今天跟你们分享。准备好了吗？好的。
Thank you, thank you. I love that song. And I have a secret to share with you. So, by playing that song for you, I just hit my twentieth hour of practicing the ukulele. Thank you. And so it's amazing, pretty much anything that you can think of, what do you want to do. The major barrier to learn something new is not intellectual, it's not the process of you learning a bunch of little tips or tricks or things.The major barrier's emotional.
谢谢大家。谢谢。我超爱这首歌。告诉你们一个秘密。当我为大家演奏完这首歌，我达成了练习尤克里里20小时的目标。谢谢你们。真的很神奇，几乎所有的事情，只要是你想做的。学习新事物的最大障碍并不是智力，并不是你要去掌握很多诀窍，走捷径。主要的障碍是情绪上的。
We're scared. Feeling stupid doesn't feel good, in the beginning of learning anything 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.
我们会害怕。会觉得自己很笨，在你学一样新东西的开始阶段，你会觉得自己很傻。因此，最大的障碍并不是智力，而是情绪。投入20小时在任何事情上吧。你想学什么都可以。一门新的语言？学习烹饪？想学画画？什么让你兴奋，什么让你开心。那你就去做什么。只需要20小时。去享受吧。
