The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something
outsideonline.com
The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something
1–10 of 72 posts
Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something
#2That's not about the benefits of being terrible. It's about the benefits of improving and mastering skills.
Some things I'd rather just enjoy being terrible at. I make bad art badly, for instance, with no self-pressure to even attempt to be good. And no desire to consult a life coach to see if I'm doing "wrong" right. It's cathartic!
Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something
#3I'm envious of people who are good at being bad. It's a skill that lets you choose how to develop yourself.
I've noticed that it's really difficult for me to be bad at something, by which I mean that of my brain hasn't decided that it really needs to keep doing something, I gravitate towards things that I'm already decent at even if I don't really feel like I enjoy it.
Doing even things that I might initially enjoy quickly becomes extremely stressful if I can't observe myself making progress. Forcing things works for a while, but is not sustainable.
Sometimes there's also this weird disconnect between what I want to work on and the things my unconscious brain wants to work on, and that does get stressful as well.
Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something
#4I'm envious of people who are good at being bad. It's a skill that lets you choose how to develop yourself. I've noticed that it's really difficult for me to be bad at something, by which I mean that of my brain hasn't decided that it really needs to keep doing something, I gravitate towards things that I'm already decent at even if I don't really feel like I enjoy it. Doing even things that I might initially enjoy q…
This plus the anxiety of thinking you are bad at everything despite evidence to the contrary.
Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something
#5That's not about the benefits of being terrible. It's about the benefits of improving and mastering skills. Some things I'd rather just enjoy being terrible at. I make bad art badly, for instance, with no self-pressure to even attempt to be good. And no desire to consult a life coach to see if I'm doing "wrong" right. It's cathartic!
@drewcoo I hear you, I did get this concept from the article too, with the example of a young child that is happy to try new things and just enjoy it. I think the improvement and learning or getting good at things is a side effect. Beyond just having fun doing new things, mastering new things can be an entirely different pursuit with it's own rewards but perhaps takes a lot longer (the "10,000 hour rule" concept that Malcolm Gladwell writes about in his book Outliers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29 ).
Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something
#6I'm envious of people who are good at being bad. It's a skill that lets you choose how to develop yourself. I've noticed that it's really difficult for me to be bad at something, by which I mean that of my brain hasn't decided that it really needs to keep doing something, I gravitate towards things that I'm already decent at even if I don't really feel like I enjoy it. Doing even things that I might initially enjoy q…
I have the opposite problem. As soon as I become remotely competent at something, I have a hard time bringing myself to do it.
Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something
#7I'm envious of people who are good at being bad. It's a skill that lets you choose how to develop yourself. I've noticed that it's really difficult for me to be bad at something, by which I mean that of my brain hasn't decided that it really needs to keep doing something, I gravitate towards things that I'm already decent at even if I don't really feel like I enjoy it. Doing even things that I might initially enjoy q…
This plus the anxiety of thinking you are bad at everything despite evidence to the contrary.
I think part of that is the fact that the better you become at something, the better you are at recognizing how much you don't know; and I think that that skill generalizes, so over time you can get overwhelmed trying new things because you can "instantly" see how much you're missing, especially if you have no transferrable skills that apply.
Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something
#8I suck at karaoke, but it is so much fun. Even more because I am so bad at singing.
My friends usually cannot stop laughing when my voice starts to break.
It would be enjoyable too with a good voice I guess, but I do not wanna miss the times we had fun singing with my poor voice
Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
This plus the anxiety of thinking you are bad at everything despite evidence to the contrary.
I think part of that is the fact that the better you become at something, the better you are at recognizing how much you don't know; and I think that that skill generalizes, so over time you can get overwhelmed trying new things because you can "instantly" see how much you're missing, especially if you have no transferrable skills that apply.
I definitely get this with speaking foreign languages - English feels like a second mother tongue to me at this point, but even though I can create Spanish sentences, I get choked up when about to speak.
Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something
#10Being very bad at something means that you will work through it without ego. You haven't yet attached your self worth to the thing, so you don't care how you are perceived at doing the thing.
I struggled so much studying computer science in college just because I was afraid of looking like I didn't know something, instead of realizing that I was supposed to not know these things because I never encountered them before.
I took some biology courses for fun, and easily got the top grades in the class because I had no attachment to the result or subject matter.