Written by: Telile Fikru Badecha on May 19, 2014

Josh Haufman, The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything…Fast, is a very fun read. Haufman shares so many great ideas on how to learn new skills. The author argues, “deliberate practice is the core of skill acquisition” (p.4). He also recommends the idea of “sufficiency” as a key to rapid skill acquisition (p.5), thus the goal is to do well not to worry about becoming perfect (p. 17). He also suggest that to learn any new skill we need to break down the skill we want “to acquire into the smallest possible parts, identifying which of those parts are most important, then deliberately practicing those elements first”  (p. 5). Furthermore, Haufman enlists ten principles of rapid skill acquisition. The first one is “ Choose a lovable project.” I thought about several lists of new skills that I would really love to learn. I really want to learn how to the play piano, ride a bike, swim and so on.  Nevertheless, I do not have a piano or bike and I cannot afford to get one at this point. Learning how to swim might not be that costly but I don’t have a pool and I will put it on hold for the right timing.

Another very important possibility which popped into my head was improving my guitar playing skills.  Since I have an acoustic guitar so I will have no product barrier of improving this skill.  Although I have been playing my guitar for quite some time, I only know how to play a few cords. I would like to take this opportunity to learn how to read and play all major and minor cords very well. This is something I always wanted to do but didn’t have time to do it.

So my first step was finding the right tools. There are lots of useful printable guitar chord charts and videos on online. I found very helpful resources on “easyacousticguitarchords.com” [1] to begin learning basic guitar cords. On this website, there are YouTube video tutorials on how to place fingers on the fretboard and the notes and tabs for the chords are explained below the video. Another helpful resource comes from “guitarfriendly.com.” This website does not have a video tutorial but is useful to use as a reference and to play without watching the video.[2]  All the major and minor cords are listed on the chart clearly.

Since May 8 I have been on the road for my work and it was not convenient to carry my guitar with me. But beginning May 19, I will be focusing my full energy only in learning major and minor cords.  My goal is not to become a world-class master, just to play all major and minor cords very well. Above all, taking time to play my guitar everyday for an hour is also a great way to create space and time to play and sing. Eventually, I plan to learn advanced guitar chords but for now I will just focus on reading and playing the basic cords and notes.

About the Author

Telile Fikru Badecha