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The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

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Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

#61

Post by p00dles »

danboarder wrote: post #5
drewcoo wrote: post #2

That'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…

If you're interested, David Epstein wrote a book called "Range" that provides an alternate viewpoint to the 10,000 hour rule. I found Epstein's model resonated more for me than the 10k rule.

https://davidepstein.com/the-range/

Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

#62

Post by p00dles »

motohagiography wrote: post #44

The big difference is when you learn something as a kid, you "become," something, where as an adult, it's just another thing you do, at least until you have spent more of your life doing it than not, and few, if anyone, remember a time when you didn't. This is a skill I've developed, and it's as difficult as anything. I've been taking lessons from masters at things for the last decade and more, and the ability to bec…

+1 to challenge of learning a language as an adult. I feel that once you get older, you aren't in as many situations where you don't know what you're doing. Partially because it sucks to not know what you're doing, so you avoid those situations, and partially because you simply get better at the things that you do over time.

It's been helpful for me to remember that for every expert, there was a time when they were the same level as you are.

Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

#63

Post by brailsafe »

vikiomega9 wrote: post #58
brailsafe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite problem. As soon as I become remotely competent at something, I have a hard time bringing myself to do it.

I have the same problem. Once I get some sense of understanding the overall skill or problem I lose interest? Novice skill is definitely a worse thing to have and getting better takes a lot of consistent work and time. How do I fix this? It seems like a motivation problem, possibly some sort of craving for novelty perhaps (I don't want to say ADHD but sounds like it)?

ADHD for me. It became such a problem that I saught help from the nurse practitioner at my Uni and got a diagnosis (at 27)

Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

#64

Post by vikiomega9 »

brailsafe wrote: post #63
vikiomega9 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same problem. Once I get some sense of understanding the overall skill or problem I lose interest? Novice skill is definitely a worse thing to have and getting better takes a lot of consistent work and time. How do I fix this? It seems like a motivation problem, possibly some sort of craving for novelty perhaps (I don't want to say ADHD but sounds like it)?

ADHD for me. It became such a problem that I saught help from the nurse practitioner at my Uni and got a diagnosis (at 27)

What techniques do you use now to cope? I'm going to go get a diagnosis as well, I think I have enough anecdotal evidence to talk to a medical professional.

Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

#65

Post by gowld »

b3morales wrote: post #55

> When you become a beginner, you are, as much as anything, training your curiosity—and the related trait of openness to experience. Are the Big 5 traits something you can actually train on? I've never seen anything to indicate that. I thought they were considered inherent. Would love more info if I have it wrong.

The big 5 traits are merely correlations that appear in personality survey questionnaires.

Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

#66

Post by BenFrantzDale »

silvestrov wrote: post #22
jfoutz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try cooking. The skill cap is high, it doesn't take much to make things OK, and you gotta eat. it has helped me a lot. Plenty of times I don't want to do it, but it's hard to put off for long. You can screw up a lot, and the results are still edible. Every damn meal I make has problems. Usually it's pretty good, but there are things I can do better with the output and the process. No matter the outcome, I feel better…

Cooking is one thing I'm terrible at: there is no feedback loop at all. No matter how much time I spend on 'experimenting', I don't get any better. Many people simple cannot fathom this. They deny the existing of any such possibility.

Take a class. It can be fun and an instructor can show you what you could do better.

Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

#67

Post by imtringued »

pmg102 wrote: post #31
silvestrov wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cooking is one thing I'm terrible at: there is no feedback loop at all. No matter how much time I spend on 'experimenting', I don't get any better. Many people simple cannot fathom this. They deny the existing of any such possibility.

Absolutely the same. Some people just naturally improve when iterating on something (for me, coding is this way) while other just stay at "incompetent" forever - for me, most other activities such as DIY, playing guitar, cooking, and so on. I always fail to remember this when getting frustrated at programmers who don't seem to improve

There are two ways to learn something.

Copy an established method from someone else.

Try something random until you run out of ways to mess up.

The latter is extremely time consuming but if you get through the initial hurdles you will have a complete understanding why the "established method" works in the first place.

Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

#68

Post by brailsafe »

vikiomega9 wrote: post #64
brailsafe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD for me. It became such a problem that I saught help from the nurse practitioner at my Uni and got a diagnosis (at 27)

What techniques do you use now to cope? I'm going to go get a diagnosis as well, I think I have enough anecdotal evidence to talk to a medical professional.

It has a lot of comorbities with other things, but it's worthwhile to see someone. I haven't yet found a way to reconcile my need for a job (particularly one in programming) with my symptoms. That said, concerta seems to help a bit under certain conditions. I also afixed my house key to my pants. I have learned to enjoy the bits that make me outgoing and end up letting me meet tons of people

Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

#69

Post by imtringued »

motohagiography wrote: post #44

The big difference is when you learn something as a kid, you "become," something, where as an adult, it's just another thing you do, at least until you have spent more of your life doing it than not, and few, if anyone, remember a time when you didn't. This is a skill I've developed, and it's as difficult as anything. I've been taking lessons from masters at things for the last decade and more, and the ability to bec…

>You can expect it to take 5-10 years to get as good or better than most of the kids who did something growing up.

But they didn't skip those 5-10 years, they just started 5-10 years earlier. I spent 30 min a day on learning a new language for the last 4 years and I feel like fluency is inevitable, before I started I thought it was impossible throughout my entire childhood.

Re: The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

#70

Post by elzbardico »

wildmanx wrote: post #39
username90 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you have a good sense of how things should taste and intuition for how what you put in affected it.

And how it should taste at this stage of the process. It needs experience to try some dough and extrapolate from it how the cake/bread/... will taste after baking it. Same with many sauces, for example. Things change when mixed with pasta, potatoes, veggies, meat. A sauce is much stronger without them. If you taste it and are inexperienced you may think "just right" and the dish will end up terribly bland.

Don't overthink. If it tastes good to you, fantastic. Only after that, if you want it, should you spend time trying to figure out how to make it taste like it is "supposed" to taste.
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