40 Skills in 40 Weeks – A Crash Course into Everything

These are the results of a lifestyle experiment. I tried to learn a new skill each week for forty weeks. Most people, when they learn a skill, try to perfect it far beyond everyone else, becoming among the best in their certain area. While that’s not in any way a bad thing, I wanted to know what it was like to generalize a lot of skills, learning enough to be more skilled than the average person, but not nearly an expert, in a large amount of skills. Thus, I started an experiment. Learn 40 skills in 40 weeks, for each skill not becoming an expert, and only learning in free moments in the course of a week.

This plan makes use of many of the Principles of Practical Education

• Learning a skill quickly requires the learning of the essential parts (Principle 1)
• Learning a skill in a limited timeframe makes it difficult to become bored. (Principle 2)
• Learning a skill instead of advancing another.  (principle 3)
• I doubt I can learn all 40, but trying to maximize the amount gained uses principle 4
• I don’t intend to take lessons on any of this, so it’s mostly self-taught (Principle 5)
• Keep yourself open to possibilities (Principle 6)
• I will be learning primarily alone or in a small group if the need arises (principle 7)
• Concentration is a must (Principle 8 )

The last two principles deal with others who would like to learn skills such as I did. Most lecture-style classes teach in that “Expertise” mindset. This isn’t a bad thing, however it is not effective with general learning of a large amount of skills, such as what I’ve done below. I’m sure I did not learn each skill in the most effective way, but I learned them. If I could go back, I’m sure I could’ve learned in a more effective way. This is why Practical Education is a Community effort.

Week 1 – Speed Reading

This was very easy. Almost Depressingly so. I was expecting a very high-effort high-reward thing that would be very difficult to reproduce by others. I did this in around 30 minutes and raised my reading speed from 462 Wpm to 924 WPM. Thanks to Tim Ferris for the Method I used. Success

Week 2 – Photoshop

This was also surprisingly easy, but much more difficult than Speed Reading. Assorted youtube tutorials taught me to extract objects, Whiten teeth, change hair, eye or skin color, and add or lose weight. Not a whole lot, but pretty good for a week. Success

Week 3 – Art

I really tried, but the farthest I ended up getting is copydrawing. Sure, its better than tracing, but it’s not drawing, so I’m saying this one is a failure

Week 4 – Astronomy

Refreshed my knowledge of the constellations. I also read “Pale Blue Dot”. Moderate Success.

Week 5 – Philosophy

I got a book on this and tried to read it, but it really wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be. Read about the life of Descartes. Didn’t get much further than that. Mild failure.

Week 6 – Magic Tricks

Learned a few basic Magic tricks. Nothing spectacular. Success.

Week 7 – Medical Diagnosis

Learned the top ten most common diseases and their symptoms and somewhere around 25 mental disorders. Success.

Week 8 – C++ programming

I didn’t seem to have enough time to start this, but I am taking a class on Visual Basic, so this goes On Hold.

Week 9 – Investing

Read through part of “The Intelligent Investor”. Moderate Success

Week 10 – Paper Airplanes & Origami

Learned to make a few very interesting paper Airplane and Origami designs. Most of the planes worked rather well.

Jet fighter, Stunt Plane, Reeve’s Floater, Some random plane, Classic Glider (Not the classic dart), Backwards plane, Boxoid, Paper Boomerang

Definite Success

Week 10 Summary -

10 Weeks into starting this journey, I have had 7 Successes, two failures and put one skill on hold. The skill I’ve gotten the best in at this point is Photoshop. Surprisingly, Speed Reading isn’t as useful as I thought it’d be, but nevertheless I’ve used it in quite a few situations.

At this rate at the end of the 40 weeks I’ll have aquired 30 skills. Not bad, but I want to see if I can get even more than that overall.

I’m sure I’ll end up writing posts about a few of these as well, considering they’re ease and entertainment value.

Week 11 – Music Remixing

I was really looking forward to this week, but my hard drive that I got a copy of FL studio on crashed and I lost it. I did, however, make a few mashups using Audacity. One came out nicely, the other came out decently. It wasn’t what I was going for, and I hope to revisit this someday, but it would qualify as a Relative Success.

Week 12 – Spreadsheets and Excel

I really thought this was going to be much more difficult than it turned out to be. I got the hang of the =SUM, =AVERAGE, =MAX, =MIN, and =IF functions, as well as the general layout, graphing, etc. Success.

Week 13 – Law

Researched the requirements and process for proving someone liable or guilty for a number of civil and criminal offenses. Success.

Week 14 – Cooking

I simply cannot cook. Failure

Week 15 – Photography

Learned about the rule of thirds, ISO settings and Macro Mode. Working on a photography project at the moment. Success

Week 16 – First Aid

Learned how to properly treat Bleeding, Choking, Shock and Broken Bones. Success

Week 17 – Sushi and Bento Crafting

Happy new year. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to do this, given the festivities, but I did extensive research into the recipe/preparation and if given the ingredients I’m almost 100% certain I could do this successfully Moderate success

Week 18 – Trebuchets

I learned how they worked, but I couldn’t get a hold of a kit to make one. I was disappointed, I was looking forward to this. Moderate Failure

Week 19 – Survival

Learned how to make a fire, how to make a shelter, how to make a signal fire, survival fishing, and so on. Success

Week 20 – Romhacking

Learned about and how to use Lunar Magic, which is a Super Mario World level editor. Success

Week 20 Summary

Very successful period of 10 weeks, with 8 successes and only two failures. So far, I’ve learned 15 skills, failed 4 skills, and put one on hold. Currently, at the rate I am going, I will have learned 33 out of 40 skills. While I am learning a lot every day, I am also having a lot of fun learning all of these new skills.

Week 21 – Game Mapping and Level Design

I made a few levels in Lunar Magic, which were not very good but were interesting to make and play through. Success

Week 22 – Martial Arts

Read through a book on Akido, which was very interesting! It was something that seemed very useful to know. The concept of the “fence” was especially interesting. Success

Week 23 – Juggling

I can now juggle two balls in one hand. I can now be considered “average”.  Success

Week 24 – Neuro Linguistic Programming

Learned how to “Cure a phobia”. It had an air of psuedoscience about it, but it might come in handy one day. Relative Success.

Week 25 – Robotics

Absolute failure. I couldn’t get a hold of a kit, and I seriously doubt Lego MINDSTORMS counts as robotics. Failure.

Week 26 – Public Speaking

I couldn’t make heads or tails of this. Absolute Failure

Week 27 – Cup Stacking

Got the basic cycle down to about 25 seconds. Its a really terrible speed, but I learned how it works, and as such this one is a Moderate Success

Week 28 – Fighting Game Strategy

Did a bit of reading into the competitive scene of Super Smash Brothers. The relative lack of depth in Brawl meant that I was able to get pretty good at it relatively quickly, learning skills like Mortar Sliding as Snake. Melee, however, was a completely different game.  The amount of depth and skill required for it was surprising, and it took a far longer period of time to learn than Brawl did. I did, however, manage to learn some of the crucial skills such as wavedashing and L-canceling, in addition to character-specific skills and approaches. I learned the approaches and strategies of Peach, the basics and chaingrabs of Sheik, certain strategies of Ganondorf, and basic Marth combos such as the Ken combo. Not competitive level by a longshot, but enough at least to beat most people in a friendly match. Success

Week 29 – Electronics and Modding

As a long time lurker of the Benheck forums, I was looking forward to this week almost more than any other. Sadly, a financial issue meant I was not able to get a hold of any components, systems, batteries, or controllers. Mod-wise, I have experience with homebrew and software modifications, however that was not my goal for this week, and thus this is a Failure.

Week 30 – First Person Shooter General Strategy

I showed no improvement in anything. It was a rather silly goal, but a Failure nonetheless

Week 30 Summary

I just managed to pass this week, with six successes and four failures. At this point, I’ve learned 21 skills, failed 8, and put one on hold. I’m learning more every day and have already passed a 50% success rate.

Week 31 – Bar Tricks

Learned a variety of pen tricks as well as a small amount of cutlery magic. Thanks again to Tim Ferris. Success.

Week 32 – American Sign Language Alphabet

I now have the ability to fingerspell. Success

Week 33 – Knot tying

Learned how to tie a Bowline and a Trucker’s Hitch. Success

Week 34 – Lock Picking and Other Assorted Espionage Skills

Learned how to create a padlock shim out of a soda can. Hardly “Espionage”, and not at all effecient, but plausible. Moderate Success

Week 35 – NATO alphabet

Learned A-Z of the NATO alphabet. Success

Week 36 – MUGEN Development

Learned to import stages, characters and menus. It seemed a lot more complicated than it had to be. Success

Week 37 – Linux Development

Considering I wrote the list 37 weeks ago, I don’t really remember what I was supposed to DO for this week.  Java Compilers? Failure

Week 38 – Discerning Lies and Bias

Learned about Microexpressions, Distancing Language, and (My personal favorite from this week) “Eye movement”. Success.

Week 39 – Fung Shui

I had always thought that this was an interior design concept started in china (as in Reds go South, Blues go North, etc.)

It turns out its more like a spiritual concept. Who knew? Success.

Apparently there's more to it than this.

Week 40 – Computer Science (Networking, Hexidecimal, etc)

I didn’t forsee that the programming class I enrolled in was, in fact, a “Computer Science with Visual Basic” course. However, I learned what I wanted to learn, so I’d define this as a Success.

Final Summary and Results

After 40 weeks with admittedly very little effort invested in this experiment, I’ve become acquainted with 30 skills, failed 9 and placed one on hold due to other circumstances. Depending on how you view the “held” skill, my success rate was a comfortable 75% – 77%, very characteristic of the first principle of Practical Education.

Simply the action of wanting to learn skills or facts seemed to have manifested itself in a simple enough way, and as a result of this project I’ve gained valuable skills that I will no doubt continue to utilize.

I attended no private classes, spent no money, and hired no teacher. I simply went out and found information. It should not be difficult for others to replicate this experiment with similar results, as the goal is not mastery but familiarization with basics. If anything this was a jumping off point for mastering a wide number of the skills I am now familiar with.

And as such, overall, the 40 skills in 40 weeks experiment was a surefire Success

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