Shadowing Josh Kaufman

The First 20 Hours — How to Learn Anything — How to get good at any skill in 20 hours — including the language you are shadowing. Clear and practical. Original video on YouTube: Josh Kaufman — The First 20 Hours — How to Learn Anything.

Summary

After becoming a parent, Josh Kaufman wondered whether he would ever have enough spare time to learn another skill. He challenges the idea that every new ability requires ten thousand hours, distinguishing elite performance from reaching a useful beginner level. His alternative is a focused twenty-hour practice commitment. The talk explains how he structures that practice and ends with a ukulele demonstration, which he says completes his own first twenty hours.

Key points, in order

Kaufman traces the ten-thousand-hour idea to research on exceptionally competitive performance. He argues that popular retellings turned an account of reaching the top of a field into an unnecessarily intimidating requirement for learning anything.
Start by defining the result you want and breaking the larger skill into smaller components. Practising the most useful components first makes the work relevant to that specific goal.
Consult enough resources to recognize and correct mistakes, but avoid turning research into a substitute for practice. Remove distractions and make the necessary tools available before beginning.
Commit to twenty hours to move through the discouraging early stage. His ukulele example concentrates on a few recurring chords; his final point is that feeling incompetent can be a stronger barrier than the intellectual demands of learning.

Five useful phrases to practise

Choose a caption line to open Repeat mode. Listen, then say it after the speaker.

Based on the video’s captions. Original video: The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything | Josh Kaufman | TEDxCSU · TEDx Talks.

Everyday phrases from this video

Josh Kaufman — The First 20 Hours — How to Learn AnythingStart from the beginning

Level: B1
Accent: American
Length: 19 min · 241 lines to practise
Speed: about 142 words a minute (an average pace)
Words: about 2,710; the talk asks 27 questions
Timing: Sada measures how far behind the speaker you are on every line

What to focus on in this talk

Friendly, slow and simple — a relaxed B1 talk. “Your whole world changes overnight” links “whole world” together and puts the weight on “overnight”; “a tremendous amount” and “priorities” are good for word stress (tre-MEN-dous, pry-OR-ities).

What this talk trains

Josh Kaufman speaks for about 19 minutes: roughly 2,710 words in 241 caption lines. The pace eases off as the talk goes on, from about 144 words a minute in the first quarter to 115 in the last. Overall it is faster than 12 of the other 66 talks on Sada. Its sentences average 13.1 words, no longer than the middle of the library (14.3), and 10.9% of its words fall outside the 3,000 most common English words (library middle: 12.9%). It asks 27 questions, so there is plenty of question intonation to copy. Phrases that fast speech often shortens come up again and again: “want to” (16 times) and “going to” (5 times).

Lines from across the talk, and what each one trains

One line from each quarter of the talk. Press a line to open it in Sada, ready to record. “Linking” marks words that run together: a word ending in a consonant sound joins the vowel that starts the next one.

4:12 The 10,000 hour rule came out of studies of expert-level performance.
“out of”: fast speech often shortens it to “outta”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “out of”, “studies of” without a break between the words.
8:55 Want to learn a language? Want to learn how to draw?
“want to”: fast speech often shortens it to “wanna” when a verb follows. Listen for whether the speaker does here. A question: listen to where the voice rises or falls at the end, and copy it.
13:54 Like, that's kind of important, right?
“kind of”: fast speech often shortens it to “kinda”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. A question: listen to where the voice rises or falls at the end, and copy it.
14:42 As it turns out, playing the ukulele is kind of like doing anything,
“kind of”: fast speech often shortens it to “kinda”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “As it”, “turns out”, “kind of” without a break between the words.

Words that keep coming up

Words outside the 3,000 most common English words that Josh Kaufman uses more than once. The number is how often each is said. Look up any you don’t know, then press it to practise the line where it first comes up.

How the pace changes through the talk

Part of the talk	Words a minute
First quarter	144
Second quarter	154
Third quarter	155
Last quarter	115

The fastest minute starts at 13:40 (about 179 words a minute): practise that minute once the rest feels easy. The slowest starts at 17:30 (about 59): a good minute to warm up with.

Measured from the caption timing, so the numbers are close, not exact.

How the talk opens: press any line to practise it

How to practise this talk

Warm up on the slowest minute (from 17:30) or on the opening lines above.
Then take the chosen lines above one at a time: a shortened phrase, linked words, a question.
On each line, press Record and say it after Josh Kaufman (Repeat) or along with them (Shadow), then open Compare and go again until every word is green.
Save the fastest minute (from 13:40, about 179 words a minute) for last.
At one minute a day you finish the whole talk in about 19 days, and Sada shows your first try against your latest.

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