A Five-Hour Experiment

Article Table of Contents

Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a handful of experiments to acquire a reasonable amount of skill in a new thing in twenty hours.

He studied yoga, windsurfing, programming, Colemak typing, a form of Chinese chess called Go, and the ukulele. He spent just twenty hours on each of these subjects, and got to a reasonable level of proficiency.

I was inspired to try this method, and attempted to learn to type in Colemak. (It’s an alternative keyboard layout). I got in a few hours of practice, got my words-per-minute to just above ten (yes. Ten words per minute) and then got distracted and gave up.

So - I’m going to try again, but I’m going to see how much I can accomplish in five hours of practice. These hours will certainly not be consecutive. I will practice in short intervals spread over a few days, and I’ll report back my practice.

Before I start I’ll define success, very carefully. More on that later. One of my metrics of success will be to write a 100-word post using Colemac in less than five minutes. Phew.