How long would it take you to learn something new
Tags: learning, python, development
Published: 2023-07-31 22:28:03

---
title: How long would it take you to learn something new
published: true
description: A question for you and an idea to share.
canonical_url: https://blog.juanfgonzalez.me/how-long-would-it-take-you-to-learn-something-new
tags: #learning, #python, #development
cover_image: https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/stock/unsplash/Nwkh-n6l25w/upload/818602f87a7f821eefbaf65e0b0064a4.jpeg
# Use a ratio of 100:42 for best results.
# published_at: 2023-06-02 21:28 +0000
---

Hello there, my friend.

It's the end of July. The end of summer vacations for many people. And the start of the winds of August (well that used to be the case).

Since many people start moving from summer break into the 2nd working half of the year and others start going back to their studies

I think it's a good time to

![Get back to work](https://media.giphy.com/media/BppJuhtpnIdeCtR4VB/giphy-downsized.gif)

## The origins

Here's an interesting idea I had.

I've talked at length before about many concepts & topics related to learning. 

- From [steps you can take to improve that process](https://tealfeed.com/4-powerful-steps-improve-learning-lhyl6). 
- Getting better not only in [the technical aspect but also the personal one](https://blog.juanfgonzalez.me/getting-better-at-both-sides-of-the-stack).
- Powering up your [learning with better focus](https://dev.to/juanfrank77/trying-to-learn-something-new-get-your-focus-on-first-4a57).
- And making more progress with a [different kind of practice](https://blog.juanfgonzalez.me/how-deliberate-practice-makes-you-an-epic-developer).

But I realized that I've never _showed_ you how that plays out in the real world.

Like how that would work for a new project/venture/endeavor.

And so, I think that doing an experiment around it would be valuable for you to see how it works and also give you some ideas to try.

Which brings me to this post's title...

Here's a question for you...

If you were to take on a new project or anything similar, _how long would it take you to go from zero knowledge to getting good results in that area?_

Huh?

Over the years, I've seen different timeframes. 

Ranging from a few weeks, 3 months, half a year, 8 months, a whole year, and so on.

The important part here is not speed. It doesn't mean that someone is better than other just because is faster.

It is not a general competition of who's better than who. After all, we're all in different stages of our journey and our wants and needs are different.

The main thing here is improving over your _past self_. Don't try to be better than some random person out there. 

Try and be better than **you from a year ago**.

This means, knowing what you know now, can you do something similar again and do it much better than before?

It's not only about small gains either... I'm talking a real marked improvement. 

Let's say for instance, you were able to write and schedule 20 great social media posts in an hour. Can you do 40 equally great ones in 40 minutes or less?

That might seem too much of a random example, so let me give you a real one.

Back when I started writing online, I would take me 1 hour a day for an almost entire week to finish a blog post that's about 5 mins long.

With more practice I could knock out a full one from start to finish in 1 hour per day for 3 days and then have it ready to post on the next day.

Now, I can go from a mere idea to fully polished and ready to post in 2 hours. (True story, I did it last week.)

That's the whole point. 

Not only doing _more_ of something. Instead, do more, much better, and in less time overall.

But before you get to quality and volume, you first need to know what you're doing.
Or in other words, need to be able to walk first before you can run.

That's the general idea behind what I want to present to you.

## The project

My idea for _showing_ instead of only talking, is to show you how this different kind of learning (something I call "_[Supercharged Learning](https://juanfrank.substack.com/)_") works out there in practice. 

But...

It won't be "just another random project". This will be more like a **challenge**.

Why a challenge, you may ask?

Well, for starters, I've already done several of these experiments over the past years. And going over the same process would be pretty dull (for me at least).

Doing a sort of "show and tell" and adding constraints would make it more interesting. With a time limit to make it actually challenging.

And for that, I thought about this time doing a Python challenge.

Here's how that would look like:

Going from zero knowledge whatsoever about Python to getting good enough to make my first useful machine learning project. In one week. Part time. Alongside my other responsibilities.

There will be a brief period of preparation, to gather resources and set out the stage, and then the week of the challenge. With a showcase of the results and then a brief review post with the good and the bad that happened.

That's it in a nutshell.

Is it clear enough?

Do you have any additions or suggestions for it?

Would you like to see something else or something different I didn't mention?

Let me know your thoughts.

---

That's it for now. I don't want to make this any longer than it needs to.

As always, thanks a lot for reading so far.

Keep on being awesome and see you again next time.

Bye.

![Bye](https://media.giphy.com/media/1xV82gYzeGbdtgwdSZ/giphy-downsized.gif)