Another Great Article by Tim Ferriss

This one is about learning (not mastering) a language in ONE HOUR. I have not tried this yet (nor am I likely in the near future), but what I like about Tim is that he always challenges conventional wisdom and finds short-cuts to wherever he wants to go.

For a past couple of weeks I have been reading up on running marathons. We watched this fabulous documentary called "The Marathon Challenge" on NOVA, about 13 "ordinary" (i.e. fairly physically unfit) people who trained together for 9 months. They all managed to complete the Boston marathon! A friend of mine who recently finished a half-marathon told me that the rough rule of thumb is that it takes about 15 weeks of training once you can run for 30 minutes. Now that's news to me! I thought it takes years and years of preparation to run a marathon. (I guess 90% of it is half mental.)

That reminds me of another conversation I had with the great Dr. Greg Lyne (a god among barbershoppers). I asked him how long it would take for a quartet to qualify for the Internationals (basically a matter of performing at a certain level). He replied, "One year!" Not years and years. One year. I have come to believe that if you are really committed - which means being smart about rehearsing, working intensely on the basics and above all being willing to change - one year will take most quartets to the Internationals. In fact I am trying to put together a quartet to do just that.

The point is that we have a picture in our head about how difficult a certain thing is and how long it's going to take us to get there. It also seems obvious that the insiders have a vested interest in prolonging the training ("It will take you 10 years to master a language!" "It will take you 6 years to get a black-belt.") There is a lot of research and personal experience (such as Tim Ferriss's) out there that proves otherwise.