don't forget the second part where i quit something i'm good at because i don't immediately see exponential growth which means my current abilities are a mere fluke
this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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I like the old line, "If at first you don't succeed, try again, and again...Then give up. There's no point in making a fool of yourself."
I'm sure this was used in a beer advert in the UK in the 90s or early 00s
I heard it from 1920s movie star W. C. Fields.
My grandmother told me this when I kept falling off my dinosaur.
I don't mean this in a bad or critical way: I genuinely do not understand this thought. As humans we are born shit at EVERYTHING. Literally. We can't even fucking walk.
In the developed world we spend the first 16-18yrs learning. And then some of us spend some more time learning.
I learned a new sport when I joined uni. Then I learned to programme. Then I learned a martial art.
I have spent my entire life being shit at things. Because I've also spent my entire life learning.
If you refuse to be shit at something, then you also refuse to learn, and to me that makes no sense - I think I'll only stop learning when I die.
This is just my unfiltered thoughts - I am not trying to be critical, I am just trying to explain how I cannot comprehend this kind of thinking because it is the literal antithesis of me.
I'm not saying this to brag, because I'm absolutely fucked like the person in the picture says, but "learning" in school was piss easy, pretty much only required being there. For me there really wasn't a "being shit" period, at least that was noticeable to me. Then I got to college and I don't know if it was the change in how classes were structured and scheduled, or that natural aptitude had taken me as far as it could, or both, but I didn't know how to cope with the effort it required, because I never had to develop that skill prior to that. Frankly, I still haven't. So yeah, I totally get this post.
Same here for me. Learning in school never took any effort at all. I was always good enough with little practice that I didn't push myself to do more.
College is the great equalizer that shows people they're not as gifted as they thought.
Ironically I found school easily 10x harder than anything at university, bachelors and masters level included.
I think thats just how it works. If you found school harder then you probably developed some skill or habit knowingly or otherwise, but if you found it easy then you just never did put in effort to develop such skill. Of course this does not apply to all.
I found school really difficult as an adolescent. I struggled at everything and nothing made sense. But it did prepare me for the working world.
Some people are just good at learning, at school. Like I would show up to every class, every lab, take notes paraphrased by hand, rewrite them out again on my own, ask questions after class, make flash cards... Then I have this distinct memory of drilling a classmate who had missed a bunch of classes and were in a bad way, and... They got a much better score than me. Some people make it look so easy... I wish.
Anyway, that's all to say not everyone has your gifts. I'm also a programmer which is thankfully lucrative, so it was worth it. But it's never been easy for me, or I imagine many other people.
Tenacity is a crucial skill to develop, and not everybody figures that out.
Children are great at it, because they're constantly learning to do everything and are expected to be beginners, but at a certain point for many adults, failing at something new challenges their self-image/self-worth, so they just find reasons to avoid developing skills altogether.
Learning how to fail is a necessary step on the way to mastering anything.
Children are often shit at it, and have full on screaming meltdowns several times in a few minutes when something doesn't go immediately their way
Otoh little bastards don't have a choice so they gotta suck it up
In the wise words of Jake the Dog: "suckin' at something is the first step to bein' sorta good at something"
If at first you don't succeed redefine success
This what Trump is doing, right?
It's how you win bigly.
... Are you me?
My way of quitting that was Dark Souls 3 (even though I apparently suck at it way more than I should) - Can't beat that part? Get your arse back over there and stop complaining. You WILL succeed.
The soulsborne games are a legitimately effective way to build tenacity.
Noob
I like to preach about practice. It's corny sounding, but practice is everything. You gotta focus on the thing rather than how you feel about your progress with the thing.
I tend to be that way in the wood shop. I'll try a technique, and if it doesn't produce usable results I ditch it almost immediately and try something very different. LIke I have completely given up on cutting tenons on the table saw, that's my router table's job.
Why learn to program computers or make art over years of training when half way through AI can come and take your job prospects and make it so all that time was waisted? Something that you can learn quick you can do for a while before it becomes obsolete.