For this last week, a goal was to focus on practicing a \u201cnew\u201d skill for twenty hours in hopes of acquiring at least rudimentary capability with that skill.\u00a0 The idea for this endeavor arose from the text, \u201cThe First 20 Hours: How To Learn Anything\u2026Fast\u201d by Josh Kaufman.<\/p>\n
My initial idea had been to add-in a fourth ball to my already learned ability to juggle three balls in a circle.\u00a0 This notion seemed like something both challenging and accomplishable.\u00a0 However, my idea was not to be; life had something different in store for me.<\/p>\n
This last week my middle school daughter was given the assignment of needing to build a catapult (during home, not during classroom hours) that needed to comply with a concerning amount of schematic specifications and needed to catapult a one-inch wooden block at least twenty feet.\u00a0 By the nature of how these things work, my daughter\u2019s project became my own and I have spent a lot (add as much emphasis as you would like to \u201ca lot\u201d and I think you\u2019ll get the picture) of time this week learning the eminently marketable new skill \u2014 he thought, wryly \u2014 of creating a working small-scale replica of a medieval siege tool.<\/p>\n
It is important to note that while I have a reasonable amount of tools available and some miniscule level of common sense and skill in navigating projects such as this, my daughter\u2019s assignment was for all practical purposes a brand new undertaking.<\/p>\n
First, my daughter and I began with the \u201cdeconstructing\u201d portion about which Kaufman writes.\u00a0 Everything was broken-down into individual components of what we needed to purchase and what steps needed to be taken once those purchases were made (ie. how to put the contraption together).<\/p>\n
The second step that Kaufman discussed that is part of the process of his rapid inculcation is the \u201clearning\u201d phase.\u00a0 Through our deconstructing phase, much of the learning we needed to have about what the measurements should be, what the completed design would actually look like, how the machine was supposed to work if done correctly were already learned.\u00a0 As well, thankfully, I had and knew how to use the tools we required for the project \u2013 though it had been some time since utilizing all of them and certainly not for something like this, so there was a definite sense of learning happening in the doing.<\/p>\n
The next step Kaufman notes as necessary to the process is \u201cremoving.\u201d\u00a0 The idea of removing speaks simply to erasing mental barriers one has to engaging well with this new endeavor.\u00a0 In this case, for me, the saying \u201cnecessity is the mother of invention\u201d proved true.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t desire doing something like this of my own accord, but for the sake of my daughter and her assignment I\/we did it.\u00a0 I am glad we did.<\/p>\n
Finally, we engaged in perhaps Kaufman\u2019s most important requirement to give rapid skill acquisition the opportunity to occur \u2013 that is, \u201cpracticing.\u201d \u00a0As Kaufman promotes, seemingly somewhat arbitrarily, we \u00a0practiced for at least twenty hours.\u00a0 In fact, with the multiple layers involved in a project like this, we went some over that time requirement.<\/p>\n
Finally, we now have managed to get the catapult built and are in process of staining the wood.\u00a0 I found the process of building the catapult somewhat self-satisfying in the sense that I could simply get it done.\u00a0 At this point in my life, building two-feet-plus contraptions out of two-by-fours is not my norm.\u00a0 As well, I had to drill and smooth out perfectly rounded holes in three of the two-by-fours, had to make multiple recalibrations that included unscrewing and rescrewing, extra sanding, diverging from the plans suggested cutting, etc.\u00a0 Quite taxing mentally wondering whether all the work would be for naught in the end.<\/p>\n
After finishing the building portion of the catapult, we had to move into the testing phrase.\u00a0\u00a0 Here we also had to make further modifications to the cup that holds the projectile in order for the projectile to be able to fly far enough.\u00a0 We brainstormed a number of other possible modifications before alighting on the simplest of them all \u2013 changing the way the holding cup was structured.\u00a0 We made the modifications and it worked!\u00a0 Now the projectile flies much farther than the necessary requirements.<\/p>\n
Overall, this has given me further confidence in my ability to see projects like this through.\u00a0 In this case, it has also been a reminder to me that though I am very glad to have the skills I need to do this kind of building and also that I have the tools that allow such building to be done more easily than not \u2013 if I had only had manual rather than electric hand-tools I don\u2019t believe the project would have been completed anywhere near on time \u2013 this particular skill-set is not one at this point in my life that I want to enhance further than I have already been able to learn it.\u00a0 I think I am called more into building the structures of relationship, structures of the mind and heart and soul rather than to building physical structures.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m thankful we engaged in this twenty-hour rapid acquisition exercise, but I\u2019m also thankful it\u2019s over.\u00a0 However, I am also glad to know the specific steps to this process of learning and believe that I will utilize them again with seeking to learn a skill that arises a bit more from my own volitional and vocational inclinations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For this last week, a goal was to focus on practicing a \u201cnew\u201d skill for twenty hours in hopes of acquiring at least rudimentary capability with that skill.\u00a0 The idea for this endeavor arose from the text, \u201cThe First 20 Hours: How To Learn Anything\u2026Fast\u201d by Josh Kaufman. My initial idea had been to add-in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,29],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-kaufman","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1400,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/1400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}