[jajaBinks]

My take-away was - never estimate confidently without knowing anything about the task. Because the initial assumptions might be very incorrect. Invest maybe 2-5% of the time to start doing something (ie begin learning Korean to realize that it's a phonetic language, and reading is easy within just 1 day). This will allow you to come up with the right estimate. Thoughts?

[TeMPOraL]

I have a framework of thinking about learning new things, which I sometimes call the 10-100-10k approach. I wrote about it year ago[0], and the responses helped me refine it.

I think the investing 10 hours in learning a new thing is more than enough to get the initial estimate you describe. Probably even 5 would be enough. That's 10 pomodoros. It's something I'm willing to consider to throw at totally random things to see if they are actually as hard as I think, and if I actually want to learn them.

Most people don't really spend even 15 minutes, to the clock, on things they think are hard to learn - and so underestimate just how much you can progress with as little as few hours, if you actually sit down and do it.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8197334