"This book provides guidelines--via 40 practical tips and processes--to fulfill anyone's natural ability. It's about becoming the master of your own fate, your own skills and your own success. Greatness is not a natural gift... It is something achieved through hard work and diligent practice--not from dreaming, but from working. Commit to becoming the best: work hard, have a positive mindset, and practice, practice, practice."--Back cover.

Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.

Regulation : how the politics of skill become law -- Production : how skill makes cities -- Skill : how skill is embodied and what it means for the control of bodies -- Protest : how skillful practice becomes resistance -- Body : how definitions of skill cause injury -- Earth : how the politics of skill shape responses to climate change.

A manual for building a faster brain and a better you! The Little Book of Talent is an easy-to-use handbook of scientifically proven, field-tested methods to improve skills—your skills, your kids’ skills, your organization’s skills—in sports, music, art, math, and business. The product of five years of reporting from the world’s greatest talent hotbeds and interviews with successful master coaches, it distills the daunting complexity of skill development into 52 clear, concise directives. Whether you’re age 10 or 100, whether you’re on the sports field or the stage, in the classroom or the corner office, this is an essential guide for anyone who ever asked, “How do I get better?” Praise for The Little Book of Talent “The Little Book of Talent should be given to every graduate at commencement, every new parent in a delivery room, every executive on the first day of work. It is a guidebook—beautiful in its simplicity and backed by hard science—for nurturing excellence.”—Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit “It’s so juvenile to throw around hyperbolic terms such as ‘life-changing,’ but there’s no other way to describe The Little Book of Talent. I was avidly trying new things within the first half hour of reading it and haven’t stopped since. Brilliant. And yes: life-changing.”—Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence

Transform your yoga practice into a force for creating social change with this concise, eloquent manual of social justice tools and skills. Skill in Action asks you to explore the deeply transformational practice of yoga as a way to become an agent of social change and work toward a just world. Through yoga practices and philosophy, this book explores liberation for ourselves and others, while asking us to engage in our own agency—whether that manifests as activism, volunteer work, or changing our relationships with others and ourselves. To provide a strong foundation to begin this work, Michelle Cassandra Johnson clearly defines power and privilege, oppression, liberation, and suffering, and invites you to make changes in your life that promote equality and freedom for all. This revised and expanded edition offers journaling practices and prompts in each chapter; includes more material on how power and privilege inform the yoga industry; explains how to integrate justice into teaching the eight limbs of yoga; and offers ways to support people as they move through their resistance and discomfort in the face of injustice. This edition also offers a fuller look at how the yamas and niyamas—the ethical precepts of yoga—can be studied in order to create a more just world, and it offers more support for yoga teachers seeking to radicalize their yoga.

Improve Your Social Skills is a comprehensive, practical guide to social skills.It contains 200+ pages of step-by-step, easy-to-understand explanations of social interaction, written by a professional social skills coach whose TEDx talk on overcoming the social challenges of Asperger's Syndrome has been viewed over 180,000 times.You'll learn how to: Make Conversation (and keep conversation flowing smoothly!) Read Body Language (and send positive signals with your own body language!) Meet New People (and make friends with them!) Tell Stories In Conversation (that don't bore your audience!) Combat Shyness And Social Anxiety (a little courage every day adds up!) Date Successfully (without manipulation or sneaky tricks!) And More! (lots more!)Ok, enough with the bullet points.I'm Dan Wendler, and I wrote the book. I wrote it because I believe everyone deserves a place to belong and I didn't want poor social skills to hold anyone back from friendship and community. even if they struggle with social skills. I know firsthand how hard it is to struggle socially. Growing up, I was bullied, harassed, and excluded -- no matter how hard I tried to fit in. It wasn't until I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome that I put the puzzle pieces together. I realized I struggled socially because I didn't have any social skills -- and just like any other skill, social skills can be learned. So I started to learn them. It took hard work, but I soon started to see improvement in my ability to interact with others. Eventually I was able to start making wonderful friends and today I feel comfortable and confident in all sorts of social interactions.On January 1st, 2012, I launched ImproveYourSocialSkills.com to share what I'd learned with the world. Hundreds of thousands of people visit the site every year, and I'm excited to help even more with the Improve Your Social Skills Kindle guide.The guide you're about to read is a compilation of the social principles I've learned during my lifetime of personal social skills study, as well as the techniques I developed while offering hundreds of hours of social skills coaching. These principles led me to a life full of close friendship, satisfying connection, and tender romance.I believe that with these principles, you can live a life full to the brim with friendship, connection, and love. I hope that after reading Improve Your Social Skills, you'll believe that too.

This ultimate guide for tech makers covers everything from hand tools to robots plus essential techniques for completing almost any DIY project. Makers, get ready: This is your must-have guide to taking your DIY projects to the next level. Legendary fabricator and alternative engineer Chris Hackett teams up with the editors of Popular Science to offer detailed instruction on everything from basic wood- and metalworking skills to 3D printing and laser-cutting wizardry. Hackett also explains the entrepreneurial and crowd-sourcing tactics needed to transform your back-of-the-envelope idea into a gleaming finished product. In The Big Book of Maker Skills, readers learn tried-and-true techniques from the shop classes of yore—how to use a metal lathe, or pick the perfect drill bit or saw—and get introduced to a whole new world of modern manufacturing technologies, like using CAD software, printing circuits, and more. Step-by-step illustrations, helpful diagrams, and exceptional photography make this book an easy-to-follow guide to getting your project done.