thinksquad:

Learn Anything in 20 Hours with This Four Step Method

With just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice, you can go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. That’s the message from Josh Kaufman, author of The First 20 Hours. In the video above, he reveals the four steps to learning any new skill, fast.

It’s a long, 20-minute TEDx Talk, but entertaining and enlightening too.
The four steps in Kaufman’s method are:

Deconstruct the skill: Break down the parts and find the most important things to practice first. If you were learning to play a musical instrument, for example, knowing just a few chords gives you access to tons of songs. If you want to learn a new language, learn the most common 2,000 words and you’ll have 80% text coverage.
Self-correct: Use reference materials to learn enough that you know when you make a mistake so you can correct yourself.
Remove barriers to learning: Identify and remove anything that distracts you from focusing on the skill you want to learn.
Practice at least 20 hours.
20 hours amounts to just 40 minutes a day for a month, so what are you waiting for?

I think that both Kaufman and Gladwell are correct. 

You can learn how to be comfortable with a subject in about 20 hours. I work with different businesses all the time and it takes me about 2 to 5 days to be comfortable with what they do, how they do it and for me to slide in and work within their company. 

However, it takes a lot longer to master something. I think that’s the point that Kaufman misses. Gladwell’s book doesn’t hinge around the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to learn something, he says that it takes about 10,000 hours to master something. 

What’s the difference? The difference is someone who can play the piano and Mozart. The difference is someone who can play basketball competitively and Michael Jordan. 

Outliers also focuses in on the idea that we are all a product of our surrounds and our time. If Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were born in 1905 or 1995, there’s no way they’d be as successful in the computer world as they are today due to the fact that they were born in the 1950’s. Why is that? It just so happens that right when Jobs and Gates were entering an age where they are developed enough to learn computer programming and also old enough to turn that skill into a business, computer programming was beginning to take over. They just happened to be lucky enough to be born during a time when they could master it right as it became an important trade at which point, there they were, ready to lead the industry. 

While I can easily adapt and even fluidly function in any company with just a few days training, it would take me much longer to master that business or industry to the point that I can become one who can become a leader. 

I think the difference comes down to this; one knows how to work with something while the other knows how something works. To me, you haven’t mastered something until you understand it from a fundamental angle. 

- Sha

TED-Ed: What Happened To AntiMatter? By Rolf Landua.

A crazy theory of mine: 

What if our universe is just a single ball of matter and we’re part of a larger universe, the megaverse, where universes like ours collided with universes made of antimatter and that most of them destroyed one another and we are one of the few left just floating in this vast space, nearly all alone. The Cosmic Radiation is from the “space” that all the universes float in. What if there are still antimatter-universes but we haven’t collided with them yet, but one day we will. And it will take out our universe in a sudden flash of energy. 

jtotheizzoe:

How did feathers evolve?

Carl Zimmer, an elegant peacock among science writers, delivers this lesson on where bird feathers came from. The shared anatomy between dinosaurs and birds extends beyond the wishbone to their equally functional and extravagant plumage. Recent fossil finds give us hints about the colors and forms that adorned some prehistoric reptiles, from frilly crests to fuzzy proto-wings.

Dinosaurs didn’t take to the air for tens of millions of years after the first feathers showed up, and we don’t yet know exactly how that happened. But we know that the evolution of these delicate, beautiful and functional forms carried some dinosaurs aloft to a higher branch on the tree of life, and from that branch lept the first bird.

(view the full lesson at TED-Ed)

Erik Brynjolfsson: The key to growth? Race with the machines.

Are machines taking our jobs? Sure. While this scares some ignorant politicians, it’s actually a good thing. Automation doesn’t mean that we will become obsolete or that we won’t have new ways to make a living. We need to embrace automation, not fear it. The better the machines, the more productive and better off we are… if we choose to be.

Further reading: “The Curse of Machinery” by Henry Hazlitt.

Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA.

“Become a gangsta gardener. Make the shovel your weapon of choice.”

I can 100% endorse this video. Especially if you’re wasting time and money simply watering and maintaining simple grass…

anti-propaganda:

What’s invisible? More than you think - John Lloyd (by TEDEducation)

‘View full lesson on ed.ted.com http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-s-invisible-more-than-you-think-john-lloyd

Gravity. The stars in day. Thoughts. The human genome. Time. Atoms. So much of what really matters in the world is impossible to see. A stunning animation of John Lloyd’s classic TEDTalk from 2009, which will make you question what you actually know.

Lesson by John Lloyd, animation by Cognitive Media.’

One of my favorite TED Talks. 

Randy Powell - Vortex Based Mathematics. The future of free energy? via TEDx

We are living in marvelous times, on the brink of everything…

economistsdoitwithmodels:

nicolas-navarro-guerrero:

Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions?
Filmed Dec 2008 • Posted May 2009 • EG 2008 

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we’re not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

It’s become increasingly obvious that the dismal science of economics is not as firmly grounded in actual behavior as was once supposed. In “Predictably Irrational,” Dan Ariely tells us why.

Love Dan Ariely.

Good stuff.