Incredibly, 20 hours seems like a very short time, but read carefully what he is saying and it starts to make more sense.
One point I gathered: You don't have to aim for total mastery, just a high enough competence level to know when you are making mistakes and how to correct them. Neither do you have to go on a crash course. Even just 45 minutes a day is good enough.
The key seems to be a form of deliberate practice in which you do not practice blindly but you actively think about your mistakes and how to correct them. Think quality of work done over quantity.
This has been shown in research in many ways already, the power of incremental changes and deliberate practice. Do a quick google of these terms and you will see.
Then if the changes are so small, how do we keep motivating ourselves to keep going?
For this, I feel we should celebrate and appreciate small changes. For eg, I may not be able to speak French like a native by the end of this year, but I can already recognize more French words than I did before. And that's something more than what I had before I started. It's like saving money. 10 cents a day doesn't seem like very much, but keep at it and eventually you will save $100.
I'm about to take a hiatus from all the learning and go overseas! Still, I'm bringing along a couple of photography books to read on the flight or at night. I figure since I'm going to be taking tons of photos, why not read up on it along the way? Bonne journée!
