Like anyone else, I have a few things I don't like about myself (sometimes it's more than few things, you know how it is).
One of the traits I really wish I didn't have is the fact that I'm a lazy sack of crap. Well, sort of. I'm really good about waking up at ungodly hours to go to the gym, and I will frequently leave Brooklyn to trek into Manhattan when a lesser woman might succumb to the siren song of sweatpants and Netflix.
What I'm trying to say, really, is that I'm straight up terrible at learning new skills. I have zero patience for being bad at things and zero desire to work hard to achieve something when the initial stages of getting towards that goal are boring.
Let me give you two examples. Let's say I wanted to get better at photography (I don't, FYI. There's no need to work on photography skills when the only pictures you take are of the variety where you stick your arm out and take a picture of yourself while wasted with your girls at a bar). I could take classes or read stuff or ask a camera-savvy friend for help, and I'd hopefully get better and enjoy the process along the way. The reason why I would enjoy it is because, even if the pictures I took were god awful, I'd still be taking pictures.
As a second example, let's say I wanted to learn to play the guitar, which I did when I was 19. I spent a fair amount of time teaching myself what I could learn from the internet and eventually graduated to actual lessons. 6 months into it, I quit. Why? Because unlike photography and the shitty starter photos, the beginning stages of learning the guitar don't really involve a whole lot of playing the guitar, and what I really wanted out of it was to be good enough to play a ton of songs or jam with other people and all I was doing was taking too long to switch between chords while trying to keep up with Weezer's Island in the Sun.
I know a lot of people who love the thrill of watching their own progress with a new skill, and I am both jealous of and mystified by those people. Improvement is wonderful, but I have an extremely short attention span and I lose interest in things at the point when the novelty wears off yet I realize how many more hours of work I need to put in in order to be even mildly successful.
I don't mind practicing basic skills in volleyball, because I've been playing for 15 years and while I have tons of room for improvement, I'm good enough to play RIGHT NOW. Yet I know I will probably never take up karate, something I would love to do and that my dad has been saying for years that I would be great at (and he would know - he has a black belt, as does my brother), because all I want to do is break boards and I'm pretty sure they don't let you do that when you're a white belt.
This is why I relish the opportunities that involve being externally motivated, particularly ones that involve specific timelines. Schooling of any kind is a great way to force myself to build up new skills. I'm pretty sure that if someone had just given me a math textbook when I was younger and expected me to do some self-directed learning, I still wouldn't know what 2 plus 2 is. Even when I took bartending classes 3 years ago - I learned how to make all sorts of fancy drinks (all of which I have sadly forgotten) because I HAD TO. Would I have ever taught myself to make a ton of different martinis? Absolutely not.
I don't know how to change this about myself, but I want to. I feel like I'm missing out on so many interests or hobbies that I might enjoy but that I'm too lazy to even think about getting started on because I know how bored I'm going to get. And the thought of how good I'd be at the guitar or karate or anything else if I had just found the motivation to FUCKING DO IT ALREADY just makes me all sorts of sad. Yet I'm doing absolutely nothing to change that.
I suppose there's the option of finding a way to create some sort of external push to learn things, but I can't afford to take classes or lessons for every little thing that I might want to do. And besides, learning to motivate yourself is probably something I should figure out sooner rather than later.
So what do I do here? Do I find a way to become less lazy, or do I just stick to things that, like photography, I can be productive at even while being bad at them? Because it's really the lack of accomplishing anything that drives me away.
Suggestions welcome!
This is my new series called Stratejoy Monday. To learn more about all this goodness, see the first 5 months of my Stratejoy journey here.
4 comments:
Peer groups.
Find an environment where the actual learning process is fun. That way, even if you and everyone else around you can't actually do the thing you're learning to do, you're still enjoying the process and still likely to come back and keep trying.
Want to learn karate? Find a fun group to join. You'll spend the first year flailing around trying not to fall over, but that doesn't matter if you're laughing about it with friends and going out for a drink with them afterwards.
Good luck!
I like activities with steps to complete and achievements to accomplish. With running, skiing, and geocaching, each one has a unit of measurement to mark my level of accomplishment. Miles, number of caches found, level of difficulty of the hill; each one marks every little baby step along the way. It helps me keep my enthusiasm along the way and feel like I'm going somewhere in the beginning stages.
I think you would do well in group activities because you're social and holds you accountable to participating with others.
Or, set smaller goals. For example, karate, all you want to do is break boards, well set smaller goals to get you to that point but keep you motivated to continue on. Those are just my thoughts!
Hip hip
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