Learn Emacs in Ten Years — Edward O’Connor
http://edward.oconnor.cx/2009/07/learn-emacs-in-ten-years

Somebody emailed me the other day, asking about how to go about learning Emacs. This is my (edited and rearranged) reply. I know you’re something of an emacs wizard, so I thought I might as well ask you: how should I learn emacs? … I’ve used emacs for several years now but have not added very much emacs skill to my repertoire. Well, the short answer is, you should learn Emacs by using it for about a decade. That’s a pretty lame non-answer, so let me try to elaborate.