37 ms·

In Praise of Mediocrity

500 points by anarbadalov 8y ago

anarbadalov 8y ago
"... there’s a deeper reason, I’ve come to think, that so many people don’t have hobbies: We’re afraid of being bad at them. Or rather, we are intimidated by the expectation — itself a hallmark of our intensely public, performative age — that we must actually be skilled at what we do in our free time." Yep.
- matwood 8y ago
  I have a lot of hobbies, some are team competitive and some are only competitive with myself. If I enjoy doing something, I don't care how bad I am at it when I start. I do like to see improvement though.
- jarsin 8y ago
  I love tennis and anytime someone finds out I spend money on lessons etc the response is typically Them: you know your not 20 anymore so you have no chance of going pro right? Me: Yep Them: (stares dumbfounded)
  - ghaff 8y ago
    That seems weird. I haven’t taken skiing lessons in years but I certainly took them, as many friends did, long after the time there would have been any chance of pro. And I find it hard to believe tennis is much different. Lots of people take lessons who don’t have personal coaches in many sports.
    - chongli 8y ago
      I think people give skiing lessons a pass because you can break your neck if you make a mistake on the hill. You're a lot less likely to die while playing tennis.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        Downhill skiing isn't really dangerous although you may fall a lot. We're not talking skydiving which you probably want some instruction with. I've taken lessons for skiing but to improve technique and enjoy the sport more, never because I was concerned about safety. Country Clubs and other places where people play sports like tennis and golf have regular lessons. It's not at all unusual for casual players. I'd add that I'm an instructor/leader for hiking courses with a local club that gets a few hundred people in programs in a typical year.
  - RankingMember 8y ago
    Damn, you might want to not hang around that kind of negativity. Talk about a wet blanket.
- gnarcoregrizz 8y ago
  Heh. I don't disagree with that. I go full fledged hobby mode in most of the stuff I do, but I like competition. Unfortunately, I'll never be the best at anything I do. I have the 10% theory. That is, you can be top 10% in anything with deliberate practice and a really solid effort. After that, it gets exponentially harder, and natural ability plays a larger and larger effect. I'm really into cycling. I've been doing it all my life, but I broke into the top 10% with relative ease (judging by Strava). It took me a lot more consistent effort to break into the 5%, and a whole lot more effort (and some luck) to break into the 1-3%. Beyond that, there are some serious outliers who are just so much faster than even the 1%ers. Who knows though, maybe they're car KOMs or on e-bikes. In any case, I enjoy the competitive aspects of Strava, but some people think it ruins cycling.
  - Xcelerate 8y ago
    I have the same theory, except that hard work can get about anyone into the top 1-2% instead of top 10% (well, except maybe for income. I’m talking strictly about hobbies).
    - photojosh 8y ago
      >> I broke into the top 10% with relative ease (judging by Strava) > except that hard work can get about anyone into the top 1-2% instead of top 10% Keep in mind that people on Strava are already self-selecting out of the general population, it is instead that 10% who are interested in measuring their performance compared to other cyclists/runners. So these claims are equivalent. Top 10% of the 10% = 1%.
- raister 8y ago
  I used to brew beer... Man, I sucked... A lot... Mainly due to high expectations set by my family, my friends, my co-workers, and so on. I ended up selling everything and going for bike riding - no one expects nothing from me now...
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- mszcz 8y ago
  Same thought here. I've been playing squash for like 4 years and I still very much suck at it. The reason I stuck with it soo long is that we don't count points when we play. It's just for the fun of it, for the running, the goofy plays etc. Recently though I'm not enjoying it as much as I used to. What I realised is that, because of the way we've been playing it, I also have the mental comfort of just walking away from it the second it stops being enjoyable without the feeling of "wasting" a couple of years.
  - dv35z 8y ago
    Hah! Surprised to see squash mentioned here - such a great game. Similar to you, I love it, but am fairly bad at it (compared to the “average” person I see on the courts). That said, I’ve recently got a resurgence of excitement out of it by: (1) paying for lessons once a week (I committed an pre-paid for 20 lessons) (2) Attending the weekly/bi-weekly round-robins; playing/meeting people there. Anyone who I have fun, spirited rallies with, I get their contact info (3) once a week (I put a calendar reminder), I look at my next two weeks, and I email blast my list of squash contacts and get games scheduled in (4) my gym uses ClubLocker, which has a ranking system. Sometimes I try to “gamify” the sport by looking up people just above me in ranking, and seeing if I can beat them. (5) once in awhile, I’ll try to turn some of the squash buddies into “real” friends - suggesting a post-squash beer, etc. It’s been really fun, and made a few real friends this way! Nothing groundbreaking, but it’s been fun lately. Happy squashing!
- devmacrile 8y ago
  Keith Johnstone has a nice passage in his book Impro where he likens adults to atrophied children (which applies to hobbies of a more artistic bent): "If he believed he was a transmitter, rather than a creator, then we'd be able to see what his talents really were." "We have an idea that art is self-expression - which historically is weird... Once we believe that art is self-expression, then the individual can be criticized not only for his lack of skill, but for simply being what he is."
the_cat_kittles 8y ago
great premise, well articulated. its fairly obvious to me that capitalism in our current environment generates insane winner take all scenarios, which are partially responsible for this mentality of only doing things you are good at. the joy of learning is highest when you move from novice to intermediate, the maximum external reward is when you move from master to the best in the world.
apo 8y ago
If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you’re training for the next marathon. If you’re a painter, you are no longer passing a pleasant afternoon, just you, your watercolors and your water lilies; you are trying to land a gallery show or at least garner a respectable social media following. When your identity is linked to your hobby — you’re a yogi, a surfer, a rock climber — you’d better be good at it, or else who are you? Similar thoughts cross my mind every time I'm passed by a cyclist with a $2,500 bike wearing technicolor corporate spandex. As someone riding an ancient bike in a grubby, flapping getup, I sometimes wonder who's having more fun.
- cmpolis 8y ago
  Having been both riders in this situation - I'd speculate that you're the one having more fun. I went through phases of recreational cyclist -> competitive cyclist and racer -> back to recreational cyclist. Training and racing was immensely satisfying for the few moments when I would beat a personal best or place well, but it wasn't necessarily fun. The time, suffering and monetary cost of bike racing even on at the amateur-with-no-hope-of-going-pro level is crazy. The most fun I've had cycling was doing leisurely rides with friends or even just around the neighborhood with my partner.
- ip26 8y ago
  FWIW, riding in jeans gave me folliculitis, and a well maintained & fit bike is more pleasant to ride. Don't let the desire to separate yourself from the spandex crowd drive you to torture yourself.
  - rubbingalcohol 8y ago
    Yeah, IMO the correct combination is spandex shorts and cheap cotton for everything else. Having nice gear doesn't mean you aren't having fun.
    - ip26 8y ago
      You don't have to have spandex for the legs, for me synthetic hiking pants have done fine, and also courds in the winter. The problem was basically two things- jeans were abrasive, wearing away hair follicles, and they didn't breathe, trapping a lot of sweat/humidity.
hkmurakami 8y ago
As a wise friend of mine once told me, “if it’s worth doing 100%, it’s worth doing half assed”
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eindiran 8y ago
Does this article match other people's experience? The whole opening premise, that few people have hobbies now seems entirely wrong to me. I can't think of anyone I know who doesn't have at least a few hobbies. Many people I know are significantly into several hobbies, and most people are at least casually invested in some.
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  I know people whose only hobbies seem to be watching TV and going to concerts, but then I have always known people like that, so perhaps it is not indicative of a trend either way.
- FrankyHollywood 8y ago
  Not really, I have hobby's just as my friends have them, but I feel rare. I don't use social media, and I don't have Netflix or hbo. As a software engineer I have a lot of screen time. At home sometimes I watch a movie or do some gaming, but I don't hit the 5hr average. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/media/nielsen-survey-media-viewing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/media/nielsen-su... Doing a lot non digital things in my free time is a conscious decision. The fun thing is you meet a lot of people who are active I as well.
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apocalypstyx 8y ago
As G.K. Chesterton said: "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." https://www.chesterton.org/a-thing-worth-doing/ https://www.chesterton.org/a-thing-worth-doing/
- hypertexthero 8y ago
  Alex Martelli quoted this in his “Good Enough” is Good Enough! talk at EuroPython some years ago: https://lwn.net/Articles/557406/ https://lwn.net/Articles/557406/ https://www.simongriffee.com/notebook/europython-2013-notes/#goodenough https://www.simongriffee.com/notebook/europython-2013-notes/...
- hammock 8y ago
  That is not so much praise of mediocrity, moreso praise of excellent strategy (which will result in positive outcome no matter how it is executed).
- reaperducer 8y ago
  I used to work with a guy who would say, "It's better than good; it's done." I don't know if that was his original, but I haven't heard it anywhere else.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
    It sounds like Horace.
  - ggm 8y ago
    "I don't want it perfect, I want it by Thursday" -- J. Pierpont Morgan
  - laichzeit0 8y ago
    I've heard something similar that goes "Done is better than perfect." While doing my Master's dissertation this has never rang more true and gives me great solace.
- brian_cunnie 8y ago
TeMPOraL 8y ago
This... resonates strongly. Also, the Internet is both blessing and a curse here. On the one hand, you have free access to all the information and educational material you need to quickly get up to speed with pretty much any hobby imaginable. On the other hand, you also get to see so many people doing so much better than you. I find it subtly intimidating.
malvosenior 8y ago
It's easy not to care how good you are at your hobbies when you're already really good at something else. It takes a tremendous amount of time and energy to really master something. There just isn't time in the day left over to master multiple things. I'd like to think I'm pretty good at programming. I spend many hours a day doing it, have studied it for decades and pretty much have been completely obsessed with computers my whole life. From that standpoint it's really nice for me to have a few hobbies that are much less intense and where I can be "not good" but just enjoy myself. The position this article takes. That being said, if I wasn't an expert in my field, I may not be able to find that comfort in being middling at best in other areas. This I think is a lot of people's problem. The fear of failure (and in the west, anti-intellectual culture) stop people from even attempting to be great. Not at hobbies but at everything. So I think the article is correct, but missing hobbies are a second order effect after missing primary passion.
- westoncb 8y ago
  > It's easy not to care how good you are at your hobbies when you're already really good at something else. I've seen that at play, and it can be a very significant effect. The clearest instance from my personal experience was in self-studying mathematics. I began my regimen of study literally the day after finishing my CS degree. I'd had a 'repetitive strain injury' related to computer usage for years at that point, and had figured I would never be able to work as a programmer again (did a brief stint as a teenager). I needed to find something else and had been searching for a long time without luck—but now I had something: I'd just earn money doing mathematics somehow! It was grueling to work on at that time because it seemed like my last option for being able to do something that used my creative/technical abilities as a career (I was working at a grocery store then to put things in perspective)—and I just had no idea if I was going to be good enough with math for it to be a realistic possibility. So it was nerve-wracking anytime I attempted something that would test my ability. Several years later, after figuring out the computer use issues—I didn't need mathematics anymore. But I'd spent a lot of time learning, gaining proficiency, and developing interests in various areas; so at some point I got back into studying again. The difference is night and day—I'm far more productive, and it's just, by comparison to before, no big deal. Highly recommended if you can settle it with yourself that you're okay with things however they turn out in relation to some hobby/skill/whatever.
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
Recently an elite marathon runner collapsed just before the finishing line - it turns out that "elite" athletes seem to simply ignore their bodies danger signals I honestly don't want to push myself that far. 10 minutes a mile is fine
- ip26 8y ago
  That's a bit of an oversimplification, but culturally I notice we prize success & effort & grit in the moment, and pay very little attention to training. This results in athletes who drive themselves over the brink trying to make up for their lack of training. A favorite quote of mine: The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    It's how everyone arrives on Survivor without knowing how to make a fire - what did you think was going to happen? I understand that the Venn diagram between "people narcissistic enough to be on reality tv" and "people who like to plan ahead" is probably the number 8, but even still, c'mon! edit: Survive? No, Survivor.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      I haven’t watched for years. But, yeah, in the Bizarro world I was going to end up on the show you can be sure I would be fanatically reviewing past seasons and seriously practicing any skills that seemed relevant.
    - taneq 8y ago
      I came to the conclusion years ago that the selection criteria for shows like that is nothing to do with skills and everything to do with entertainment. They want a mix of pretty-but-dumb people, good-honest-family people, and assholes.
  - lifeisstillgood 8y ago
    These are very well prepared elite athletes at the top of their game - not me running like hell and hoping to make up for it https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2018/04/15/agonising-moment-british-marathon-runner-collapses-two-miles-finish-line-7468518/amp/ https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2018/04/15/agonis... The coverage I read indicated he (and others) regularly pushed through body warning signs, but i can't find it now.
newnewpdro 8y ago
In the United States at least, there's a very popular hobby which many people won't admit to practicing: Consumerism. And thanks to the internet/smartphones/social media etc. It's practiced 24x7, while driving, from bed, from the toilet, it's always going on and it displaces time for and interest in creative pursuits for most.
- extragood 8y ago
  I agree that there are a lot of people practicing that. I also think that there are so many distractions, things designed to catch our attention, be addicting, and take our time, that it takes a concerted effort to allow ourselves to be bored. Boredom in itself isn't useful, but it gives us the opportunity to motivate ourselves into trying new things that aren't necessarily "fun" immediately.
linhub 8y ago
I think you should visit South America, everybody is either at just hanging out or doing their hobby after school/work.
- doon123 8y ago
  Hi, this sounds interesting! Could you please elaborate a bit more. Thanks.
Emma_Goldman 8y ago
I think one of the best possible desiderata for society is to reconfigure work so that we do a lot less of it, and so that less of our self-identity and self-respect depends upon it. By the way, for those that didn't realise, this article is clearly riffing off Bertrand Russell's well-known essay, 'In Praise of Idleness'.
- afpx 8y ago
  When I bring that up to many people, they gawk. That’s just abhorrent. But, at some point, that must be the end goal, right? For at least five generations, my ancestors have been working hard to “give their kids a better life.” But, at what point will the goal be to give one’s kids the time and resources to be idle? If I was president of the world, I’d make that Humanity’s moonshot project. Of course, it may not ever be possible. But, hey, there are 100 million people out there smarter than me. Surely, someone can figure it out.
  - natalyarostova 8y ago
    >But, at some point, that must be the end goal, right? Not necessarily. For some of us work is itself the meaning we need from life. For me, it's not work-work, but it's learning new things. Idleness is extremely correlated with depression in myself. I can't be idle, or I get bad.
    - afpx 8y ago
      I agree. I like to work. I think most people do. But, people also like to work on what they want to, when they want to.
  - chasote 8y ago
    Your comment reminded me of this quote even though it might not entirely fit the topic at hand: "I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematicks and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, musick, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelaine.” John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, May 12, 1780. As I said, it might not apply to this overall discussion but I've always found it quite poignant. Sadly society is more apt to ridicule those who still pursue liberal arts due to it's economic opportunity costs. While technically correct I believe that should come from the viewpoint that this could be considered a sad failure in humanity's progress.
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watwut 8y ago
> If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block Jogging is really boring and those large goas are only way to make it fun. In the past, people typically were not jogging at all. It is not that competitions killed causual jogging - more that they made people stick with it and like it.
david-cako 8y ago
This is a phenomenon I think a lot about -- how globalization and the sheer amount of information we have available requires you to either drastically increase your expectations of yourself or drop them all together. Think about what being an alpha among a primitive group of humans (or apes) entails. It's part something that is internalized and demonstrated by that individual, and part reinforced socially by the rest of a small group of people who, within the context of the group, plainly recognize that individual as "best". This same dynamic exists for craftsmen among the group, for instance. Being at the top is always a function of where everyone else on your radar is at. It's just now you have to be your own cheerleader, because it's a much bigger pond. You have to make calculated decisions about how different things validate you (recreation vs greatness); being great at something in the 21st century really means putting your head down and having an unwavering faith in yourself. You have to keep lifting yourself back up, as the reward is always 10 steps out and always fleeting. At the same time, you now have an infinite amount of resources and inspiration for what you could become. You aren't limited by the nearest available expert, and you aren't limited by your imagination. It's all there for you to pick off the shelf.
- curiousgal 8y ago
  > ow globalization and the sheer amount of information we have available requires you to either drastically increase your expectations of yourself or drop them all together. As someone who grew up and studies in a third world country, seeing kids younger than me doing impressive things in Stanford for example is depressing as hell but compared to my peers, I am doing extremely well.
  - rukittenme 8y ago
    If it makes you feel any better 90% of those achievements are crap and the other 10% depend heavily on older mentors who've spent their lives studying the topic.
    - 50 8y ago
      I completely agree. I would even go on to add that what is held at high regard in culture is often, may I say always, not that great. What makes something great, regardless of what it is, is the state of your inner self - which might sound like hogwash but to which I firmly hold to be true. And anyways, your life is so inexpressibly your own that to be mournful because someone has something you don't have, is on a path you would like to be, etc, is to render your life and your path not true and not fruitful to the greatest extent possible. As naive as all the above may sound.
greedo 8y ago
I've taken up woodworking as a hobby after not doing much in that vein since 7th grade. Using hand tools, not power tools, and taking time. One of the leaders in this movement is Paul Sellers [1], who couldn't be kindler and more inspirational. One of his key points that he stresses is that "It's not what you make, but how you make it." I know I'll never come close to the skill level he exhibits, but I hope to approach his level of sang froid and equanimity. [1] https://paulsellers.com/ https://paulsellers.com/
- raister 8y ago
  Yes. Paul Sellers is the best. As well as: - James Wright, Wood by Wright - https://www.woodbywright.com/ https://www.woodbywright.com/ - Tom Fidgen - The unplugged woodshop - Mike Siemsen - Rob Cosman - https://robcosman.com/ https://robcosman.com/ - Frank Klausz - Shawn L. Graham, Worth The Effort - http://wortheffort.com/index.html http://wortheffort.com/index.html - Roy Underhill - http://www.woodwrightschool.com/ http://www.woodwrightschool.com/ - Joshua Farnsworth, Wood and Shop - https://woodandshop.com/ https://woodandshop.com/ - James Hamilton, aka Stumpy Nubs - http://www.stumpynubs.com/ http://www.stumpynubs.com/ - Matthew Cremona, https://www.mattcremona.com/ https://www.mattcremona.com/ - Jay Bates, https://jayscustomcreations.com/ https://jayscustomcreations.com/ - Shannon Rogers, Renaissance WoodWorker, The Hand Tool School - http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/ http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/
  - peatmoss 8y ago
    Man, this list deserves to be a post in its own right. Incidentally, the Woodwright’s Workshop show on PBS is part of the reason I donate to keep the “passport” access. Reruns of that show are pretty much the definition of my happy place.
- pawelk 8y ago
  Mr. Sellers is exceptional in his "good enough" attitude. Sometimes there are more or less precise measurements, slight differences and imperfections, etc, then he says "it's still going to last a hundred years". Also his "poor mans's" tools and ideas that demonstrate you don't have to get top of the line gear to make progress and create. I think the only areas where he aims for perfection are: tools as sharp as possible, and perfect right angles where it's important to be square. I used to be deep into photography, and these communities were strongly focused on gear. In the hand tool woodworking circles I get the feeling that gear is so much less important - of course you need a basic set of tools, but you can buy them vintage, 100 years old still in working condition and often cheap, and these will last you a lifetime, as they did for the previous owners. There are also brand new options, some more pricy than others, but I am yet to witness a heated discussion on why my brand of hand saws is better than yours, or why a single specific detail of a hand plane design makes it basically unusable on a pro level - which is the very kind of unproductive discussion that makes up a huge volume of photographer's forums. Also, I went back to photography with the attitude I have learned in wood working. Got a good enough mirrorless camera (still better specs than my last DSLR which was a semi-pro level equipment when I got it years ago). Dusted off my manual focus, USSR-made lenses and M42 adapter. It's a lot of fun again, these lenses are older than me and will last me a lifetime, just as my pre-WWII hand planes, saws and chisels. Since none of it is about the tools, it's how you use them and how much fun you have along the way.
dougmwne 8y ago
The American time use statistics make it pretty clear. Our hobby is watching television and using our phones. Anyone who says they have "no hobby" almost certainly spends hours of entertainment time each day at a screen. People just mean they have no other hobby aside from the default hobby. The same goes for anyone claiming they have no free time. No free time after sleep, work, kids and screen entertainment. It's not at all clear to me that people WANT a different hobby than the one they've got.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  Yeah, I'm not entirely clear what counts as a hobby and what doesn't. I went to a comedy show tonight. Does that count as a hobby? I don't think so, but it's also clearly a leisure activity. Does reading count as a hobby? It's still fairly passive, but less so than just watching. What about video games? Definitely not just passive, but how much do you have to play for it to be a hobby? I also have no idea where this claim that we're all to competitive to have hobbies comes from. I, like the tech bro stereotype, enjoy rock climbing, the only thing that gets in the way is my laziness, not comparing myself to those far better than myself. No-one I have climbed with has expressed status anxiety about what they can and cannot climb, though I admit to being a tad competitive with those who I am close in ability to. This author is in some super weird bubble that I have never really seen, but that's probably because I don't have kids, and that probably has a bigger impact than anything this article is talking about.
emmelaich 8y ago
I love this sentence: > Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence
egypturnash 8y ago
This is making me really want to either get back into dancing (burlesque and pole, so far, who knows what next) or finally pick up that cheap electric guitar I've wanted most of my life. Because one of the things I really liked about dancing was the room to be an amateur who is not constantly pushing to take her craft further, worrying about publicity and networking, etc - I was just some lady who was learning to dance. A lot of why I quit pole dance was feeling like I had gotten to the point where I was not going to see any more slow improvement unless I started seriously focusing on it like it was a major part of by life, and I don't have time for that.
jackconnor 8y ago
In addition to "worried about not being good at them", I think the competition for hobbies has greatly increased, too. My grandpa used to sit around on his porch in Indiana whittling because there was nothing else to do at night besides read and drink Budweiser (his other two favorite hobbies). Now, I can think of ten fun places to go at any hour and a million things I can do online and, all of a sudden, whittling doesn't seem so entertaining. That being said, I think that the author doesn't fully acknowledge modern hobbies (gaming comes to mind) which are part of staring at screens. In general, I believe we should always pursue hobbies we find enjoyable, no matter the difficulty, for their own sake, so maybe we just need to reset expectations a bit.
- FooHentai 8y ago
  That choice paralysis thing is a devil, too. I used to love video gaming and would hyper focus on a single game for months/years at a time. Now I have hundreds of games on Steam, most of which far exceed those earlier games in depth and quality, and I'm meh about the whole lot.
thebear 8y ago
I'd like to reinforce what an earlier commenter has already hinted at, with a story of a collapsing marathon runner. A lot of hobbies get much more dangerous with increased ambitions. Always ask yourself if that's worth it. As someone once said, "He who does not sore with the eagles does not get sucked into jet engines." And they didn't shoot Ringo, did they.
- baddox 8y ago
  Similarly, the early worm gets eaten.
Simon_says 8y ago
It sorta makes sense that the New York Times is advocating mediocrity.
paavoova 8y ago
the simple pleasure of doing something you merely, but truly, enjoy. I, for one, don't enjoy perpetually wallowing in mediocrity. The sense of fleeting time gone to waste weighs heavily on both the conscious and unconscious of my mind. There's a difference between not having a life's chance at being a competitive athlete but still trying within the best of your means to progress within the sport, and "taking it easy" and treating physical activity solely as occasional recreation. But this article argues for the latter - why? If you're not training for the next marathon, then why are you running in the first place? If you ask me, running the same pace, the same distance, year after year, is a waste of time no matter how much you enjoy it. And this viewpoint leads to slow decrepitude, because if you treat all of your hobbies so casually, you can never improve but only digress. Take physical activity, again, as an example: as you age, as natural hormonal production declines, as wear and tear builds up, that casual run around the block can only ever become more infrequent, more prone to injury, and thus slower and slower until one day you're not running at all. But striving to be the best runner you can be from the get-go, regardless if you have a chance at competitiveness, learning about health and longevity in the sport, will allow you to persevere far longer than the casual merely enjoying themselves on occasion. There's also general consumerism, which this article brings up for me. "Enjoyment", "fun", is largely inherent. It's then easy to say "have fun, enjoy yourself", because that goes without saying. It's far harder to put time and effort into an activity and derive pleasure from it, and the chance for failure is not only higher but more devastating. Develop chronic injury years into your sport of choice? It's over. Don't enjoy the Netflix show you're watching? Turn on another one until you do. Of course most people wouldn't consider watching Netflix a hobby. But that's only because they're at the lowest possible level of mediocrity, because, perhaps, they value cheap ideals of entertainment over all else. In reality, film and television as a medium spans over a century of arts and culture, waiting for you to delve into and master. But if you take this article to heart, you'll instead be content wallowing in the "simple pleasure" of consumption.
wtracy 8y ago
I had a little epiphany: Before the internet, and before people lived in large cities, the circle of people we came into contact might be only a couple hundred people. Out of two or three hundred people, it's not hard to be in the top tenth percentile at something. When your circle of acquaintances is the whole internet, being in the top tenth percentile of anything takes years of determined effort. Our brains still have expectations rooted in these smaller communities: That we should be able to create something exceptional and praiseworthy for our efforts. Today, it's hard to get praise for anything we do, unless it's from our families, or unless we do something truly world class. (Case in point: The other week someone shared some generative artwork here, and it got promptly criticized for not being "gallery worthy".) In the face of that, we instinctively give up.
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- spondyl 8y ago
  "When your circle of acquaintances is the whole internet, being in the top tenth percentile of anything takes years of determined effort." I like that a lot and I'm going to add it to my bag of quotes. You're definitely not wrong and it can often feel like any hobby is pointless when you're surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of people (in online communities) who are striving for the same things.
- nixpulvis 8y ago
  Don't listen to the internet trolls, build connections with people who share common interests, and hopefully some of them will support you. I have personally found the older generations (I'm 25) to be more approachable. It's this that scares me. I'll bore you with a story from today. I'm building a coffee table for my new place. I got the top from Home Depot, and was looking for table legs. I was wondering around a vintage market and met this guy Jimmy, who has a studio down the street. He sold me 4 legs for $15 and gave me a bunch of great advise, telling me to text him when I was done with it. I assured him it wasn't going to be pretty, but he didn't care in the least. This is why I hate online shopping, and these are the interactions I cherish most.
lloyd-christmas 8y ago
A few scattered thoughts: Much of this article seems to only apply under the assumption that people didn't have hobbies prior to being a working adult. Most people I know have hobbies, but those hobbies were developed prior to being working adults. The article states: > most of us will be truly excellent only at whatever we started doing in our teens. So what about all of us that have had our hobbies prior to even being a teenager? I've been playing piano now for almost 3 decades. I played nearly every day from age 4 to the day I graduated college. By the article's admission, I'm supposed to be excellent by now. But... I've steadily gotten worse since becoming a working professional. I have my 5000+ hours of practice, but only a few hundred in decade since graduating. My experience when it comes to these hobbies is that most people drift away from their interests due to self-comparison, not societal comparison. The activities mentioned by the article seem to be of the everyday athletic variety. As adults, we're supposed to be conscious about our health. Nobody cares if you're a shitty runner when it's an expectation that you're health-conscious. The same can't be said for the arts and crafts variety of hobbies. The home brewer doesn't necessarily want you to try their shitty beer; The illustrator doesn't want to show their stick figures; The woodworker doesn't want you to sit in the chair that's probably going to break under your weight, regardless of whether or not they had fun making it. The office talk of "what did you do last night?" is a lot easier to answer with "went for a run"/"watched the same TV show as you" rather than having to follow up with the inevitable Q&A about your hobby. Let's say I mentioned that I was playing piano ("I've been playing since I was 4!"). The next time my team goes for drinks and there is a piano in the bar, people want to hear me play. Do I really want to publicly struggle to play a piece I was able to easily perform when I was 12? That doesn't sound like very much fun to me. > you are trying to land a gallery show or at least garner a respectable social media following People put their best foot forward, which also assumes they have a good foot to begin with. If you suck at something, you usually don't put it up on your Instagram. My point is really just that I don't talk about my hobby, and I assume that's also somewhat common for hobbies that aren't the typical everyday athletic variety. While I realize there are statistics that heavily back TV-as-a-hobby, I think the author has a bit of a selection bias and that there is under-appreciated amount of people that simply have no desire to discuss their hobbies. The discussion can detract from the enjoyment you get from the hobby itself.
Bucephalus355 8y ago
I came across an old Dow Chemical Company ad of chemists in a lab from the 1950’s a few weeks ago. Narrator: “As you can see, no geniuses here, just hardworking average Americans” Hearing that made me sad. I’m not sure why.
- ambicapter 8y ago
  Possibly the casual maligning of "smart people".
iamgopal 8y ago
Locally great, globally average ruined quite a few years for me, until I realised collecting like minded people is the actual goal.
sidcool 8y ago
How does one find satisfaction in such a world? It's almost impossible for everyone to be best at something. This brings me down immensely.
bkohlmann 8y ago
I recently completed the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, and we had an question and answer session with former President George W Bush. One of my classmates asked him about his painting hobby and if he was afraid of being bad or of critics. His reply will always stick with me. He said, “you can’t be afraid to try new things. If id expected perfection from the start, I would never have started. To learn requires making mistakes. I paint because I love it - and I don’t care what anybody else thinks.”
gexla 8y ago
There's also a large segment of the world in which people don't have time for hobbies because they are hustling to survive. As education, medical, housing, etc explode in costs while wages stagnate, we have to work harder just to get by. There are also a lot of angles the author might be missing by condensing a long article into small blog post. In the case of the jogger posting to social media and training for marathons, is this person picking up a hobby or is this person joining a tribe? If the social experience is greater than the activity, then this example makes sense. It might even be better for people who need the social experience more than they need the hobby. I stopped reading at that point. Maybe I missed something later in the article which addresses the above points.
projektir 8y ago
I think a different way to express this problem is comparative measurement vs absolute measurement. If you can make a good chair, you can make a good chair. It shouldn't be too relevant that someone else somewhere can make a good chair. The same is much harder to see, but is true for more sports-style activities. Someone who's decent at a sport is still worth respecting, in my view. But somewhere down the line we removed the "decent", "pretty good", and "respectable", and replaced it with "sucks", and removed all motivation to get to those levels. Now you're either the best or you don't count.
domador 8y ago
Why are we so fixated on ranking people, and strictly on a linear scale? As soon as you're measuring performance on more than one dimension, it becomes very hard to rank people. Multivariate competitions, for that matter, are more interesting to me. I get bored by Olympic disciplines with a one-dimensional metric (fastest time or longest distance, for the most part), but am far more interested in team sports where players show a lot of variation among multiple measurement categories. Participants in team sports can also show a lot more finesse, creativity, or even craziness than many an Olympian who is just trying to maximize a single physical quantity in a simple sport. Competition is often interesting and appealing, but I'd prefer if we didn't let it distract us in every single activity. In the athletic realm, it's refreshing for to read about many of parkour's expositors, who seem to deemphasize competition and focus on personal satisfaction. I don't know how prevalent this attitude is among its practitioners, but I know that if I ever took it up, I'd do for my personal enjoyment... and maybe to entertain some of my friends and family members. For parkour in particular, I'd probably enjoy it less if it was structured as a competition, rather than as free form activity where one gets to see where each participant decides to travel and how they decide to go about it, free from any expectation (other than moving and avoiding major injury). Moving away from athletic pursuits, why does it even matter who the top musician is in a given musical genre? What does that even mean? I don't care about who the "best" jazz instrumentalist is, but am instead glad that there a lot of great jazz musicians out there, whose music I can enjoy, whether they happen to be the best regarded or the most obscure. I only hope that everyone from the most popular artists "down" to local bands and street musicians can make a living doing what they love, which also happens to be something I enjoy to witness, regardless of whatever rank they may have on a given scale. Other than respect for others, we should not expect anything out of people that pursue a hobby or recreational interest for their own personal pleasure. For those creating or doing something for others to enjoy, maybe we just settle for a certain, subjectively satisfactory level of proficiency with a given discipline's skills, instead of insisting that everyone seeks to becomes the "best" at whichever activity they happen to be pursuing.
FrankyHollywood 8y ago
I think this goes far beyond just hobby's and leisure activities. Society as a whole doesn't seem to accept mediocrity anymore. Take a look at the actors from 80's hit movie 'Ghostbusters' http://cdn-media.hollywood.com/images/l/ghostbustersthetrio.jpg http://cdn-media.hollywood.com/images/l/ghostbustersthetrio.... Would these guys be casted today? I can't imagine, we see mostly perfect faces on television. Movies and television are not even the worst, advertising is insane. If you count the number of 'perfects' in some commercials you easily hear it 4 to 5 times in just a couple of seconds. You need perfect skin, a perfect dream kitchen, a perfect ride in a perfect car, etc. Why do people want this? Can't blame it all to hollywood...
julienreszka 8y ago
I dislike this article.
skrebbel 8y ago
Come to Europe, we're all super mediocre here and it's great. Less snarky, I find that attaching your identity to what you do is a profoundly American thing. "I'm a Rubyist", "I'm a runner", "I'm a Republican". The moment you are what you do, everything becomes so.. important. I'm not sure if this is just my filter bubble, but most people I know "like to make demos" (as in Demoscene[0]), "enjoy speed cycling on Sunday mornings", "run a business" and "voted for the social democrats last election". It's not just a semantic difference. BTW, if you really want to experience what I'm talking about, visit a demoparty. Some people making demos are really absurdly good at what they do, it's daunting (and still totally worthless btw). Nevertheless you'll see lots of other people make demos, and really do their best at it. They know they're going to lose the compo if at least one of the big shots have an entry, but they don't care. It's an absolutely wonderful experience. (and very encouraging) (and it sometimes makes you put out horrible crap that you're ashamed of later but hey it was fun at the time) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene
- kerouanton 8y ago
  +1 for your vision. I also love demoscene and am a former scener. The idea is not to be the best. The philosophy is to experiement, try, and have fun while discovering what we, or others, can achieve. My hobby is electronics. I'm learning every time I practice and the fun and rewarding part is that there is still a lot to learn and improve. That's what a hobby should be.
  - apexalpha 8y ago
    >I also love demoscene and am a former scener. :D this is exactly what OP is about: you are a former scener? Or did you enjoy being part of the demoscene on your thursday nights?
    - skrebbel 8y ago
      Well I think he accidentally debunked me. Most people in the demoscene indeed refer to themselves as (demo)sceners. Hmm. I wonder how wrong this makes me about Republicans and Rubyists.
paraschopra 8y ago
What this article is clearly missing is that "hobbies" is a very modern concept. Humans never evolved to engage in semi-serious idle pursuits. We have evolved to compete and seek progress. What's happening is that the definition of competition and progress has been massively reconfigured due to social media. But even in pre-Industrial days, people worked hard to be better off, to accumulate wealth, to increase their social status. In fact, industrialization is a result of that ingrained work ethic. Asking people to be OK with mediocrity is like asking warring nations not to go to war. It's a well-intentioned but ultimately stupid advice because it doesn't work. What could work however is reconfiguring social media and environment: the less an individual gets exposed to competence, the more s/he'll be able to enjoy whatever s/he is enjoying.
- Err_Eek 8y ago
  I don't think that is entirely true -- surely, "hobbies" is a relatively new word, but even in pre-industrial times people had plenty of spare time to waste on stuff like learning songs/poems/card games/etc. Not every second was crucial for survival.
msiyer 8y ago
Finding the true strength hidden deep inside is the only way to not get lost in the chaos of achieving more than the other guy. Something Alexander Grothendieck said is so relevant: In those critical years I learned how to be alone. [But even] this formulation doesn't really capture my meaning. I didn't, in any literal sense learn to be alone, for the simple reason that this knowledge had never been unlearned during my childhood. It is a basic capacity in all of us from the day of our birth. However these three years of work in isolation [1945–1948], when I was thrown onto my own resources, following guidelines which I myself had spontaneously invented, instilled in me a strong degree of confidence, unassuming yet enduring, in my ability to do mathematics, which owes nothing to any consensus or to the fashions which pass as law....By this I mean to say: to reach out in my own way to the things I wished to learn, rather than relying on the notions of the consensus, overt or tacit, coming from a more or less extended clan of which I found myself a member, or which for any other reason laid claim to be taken as an authority. This silent consensus had informed me, both at the lycée and at the university, that one shouldn't bother worrying about what was really meant when using a term like "volume," which was "obviously self-evident," "generally known," "unproblematic," etc....It is in this gesture of "going beyond," to be something in oneself rather than the pawn of a consensus, the refusal to stay within a rigid circle that others have drawn around one—it is in this solitary act that one finds true creativity. All others things follow as a matter of course. Since then I've had the chance, in the world of mathematics that bid me welcome, to meet quite a number of people, both among my "elders" and among young people in my general age group, who were much more brilliant, much more "gifted" than I was. I admired the facility with which they picked up, as if at play, new ideas, juggling them as if familiar with them from the cradle—while for myself I felt clumsy, even oafish, wandering painfully up an arduous track, like a dumb ox faced with an amorphous mountain of things that I had to learn (so I was assured), things I felt incapable of understanding the essentials or following through to the end. Indeed, there was little about me that identified the kind of bright student who wins at prestigious competitions or assimilates, almost by sleight of hand, the most forbidding subjects. In fact, most of these comrades who I gauged to be more brilliant than I have gone on to become distinguished mathematicians. Still, from the perspective of thirty or thirty-five years, I can state that their imprint upon the mathematics of our time has not been very profound. They've all done things, often beautiful things, in a context that was already set out before them, which they had no inclination to disturb. Without being aware of it, they've remained prisoners of those invisible and despotic circles which delimit the universe of a certain milieu in a given era. To have broken these bounds they would have had to rediscover in themselves that capability which was their birthright, as it was mine: the capacity to be alone.
vinayms 8y ago
I really like the spirit of the article, and I sympathize with it. One visible example of this phenomenon is wrt fitness. We often hear gym goers doing "training" rather than "exercising". That usage in itself shows a sense of vanity, may be a result of general identity crisis, because most of these don't compete in anything sports-y, leave alone "strength games"; they train to train more it seems. I am not saying they ought to compete, that would be against the spirit of the article which I like, but I am just saying that even when they don't commit to such achievement oriented pursuit in action, they do it with words. Most are into fitness to improve their aesthetics but here too they set unreasonable goals. The level of obsession is unbelievable. They do the most difficult lifts with the heaviest weights and constantly monitor the "gains", because anything less is for the sissies. They are the real world Dom Mazzettis.
- forgottenpass 8y ago
  >We often hear gym goers doing "training" rather than "exercising". That usage in itself shows a sense of vanity, may be a result of general identity crisis You're reading way too much into a domain-specific term. "Training" is just when you have a regimented exercise schedule and routine to improve your body. Of course there do exist gym rats with motivations and goals a more reasonable person would consider obsessive. That's because there are for any pursuit. But your post is a long just-so story about a kind of person that the HN audience is predisposition to dislike.
  - vinayms 8y ago
    > You're reading way too much into a domain-specific term. "Training" is just when you have a regimented exercise schedule and routine to improve your body. On the same lines, one can rationalize the empty words such as "synergy" that corporate marketers use routinely that are taken apart brutally routinely.
expathacker 8y ago
Check out Victor Wooten's Ted Talk on thinking about music as a language. He compares learning music with learning to talk. The general premise: "Nobody waits until you're an expert in language before being allowed to speak, why are you expected to be a master before you can make music with other musicians?". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zvjW9arAZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zvjW9arAZ0
whatever_dude 8y ago
I think this a sidee effect of the _goal driven_ mentality so common in the US. You're never just doing something for your enjoyment; you're doing it for a goal. It's never, ever, about the journey; it's absolutely always about the destination. Of course someone in that position won't enjoy a hobby: unless they can be the best at it, and do it for a reason (money, social status), they won't do it. Yesterday I was in the train and I overheard two young girls talking. One of them said she hoped she'd be made captain of her sports team at school, "because it would look good for college". That's it. That's the whole reason. Fill a role not because you want to contribute, or because you think you'd be good at it, but because it will be one more bullet point in a few years. This is part of a trend where I see kids growing being instructed to use 100% of their time with goal achievements. Leisure time is a reason for shame. Hobbies would just be a waste your time. You can't _find out who you are_; instead you just need to check the imaginary boxes set by someone else that will guarantee a superficially successful life.
- RankingMember 8y ago
  And one of the end results I see (and have done myself) is people give up as soon as they see they're not immediately a natural at something.
vpwp 8y ago
It's quite liberating to be totally shit at everything and fail everybody's expectations. For some reason we all hit rock bottom at some point. I'm reminded of this talk from Simon Sinek when somebody at Google asked him what his worst moments in life were - a rather weird question, but the answer was great - his life was falling apart and that somehow led him to do more: https://sahilparikh.com/simon-sinek-the-finite-and-infinite-games-of-leadership-talks-at-google-e7c490299e5b https://sahilparikh.com/simon-sinek-the-finite-and-infinite-... I see adults around me all the time - not doing things. We all have something that holds us back, and it would seem the more successful we are, the more we are held back. Like it was pretty weird when Michael Jordan started playing baseball https://www.bleachernation.com/2017/02/07/michael-jordans-baseball-career-is-the-most-impressive-thing-he-ever-did/ https://www.bleachernation.com/2017/02/07/michael-jordans-ba... but then the question sort of becomes - wait, what does everybody do instead? Why don't every great athlete go try some other random sport instead? And likewise - why don't we all just go and do it, whatever the "it" may be for ourselves.
coleifer 8y ago
It's risky to tie up your ego, or sense of self, with being anything other than yourSelf. When I started out coding in my career I had a huge chip on my shoulder. I needed a popular project on github, I needed to be given that big new project, I needed the recognition and praise of others. I didn't realize I was setting myself up for a lot of angst. And I'm ashamed of some of the things I did or said trying to protect my ego, which was now bound up in being seen by others as a genius programmer. Took me 7 or 8 years to figure it out and let go.
Myrmornis 8y ago
It’s partly the fault of high street retail. Go into a shop to buy running shoes, and you’re greeted by this barrage of technical nonsense about “pronation” and details of your running gait and what sort of support you “need”. of course, it’s just an obvious ruse to get normal people to buy expensive products, but it contributes to the atmosphere described in the article. I do blame US retail culture, but the UK is so culturally coupled to the US in retail that it’s long been the way in the UK also. I’ve even been videod running on a treadmill to perform gait analysis as if I were a pro athlete! It’s embarrassing that people suck this all up. But it’s not just running, try buying a tent or sleeping bag from an outdoor store like REI in the US. “So what sort of camping do you usually do? What altitude do you normally camp at?” “Dude I just want a fucking sleeping bag.”
gerbilly 8y ago
Part of the drive to be the best may be due to conditional love. Some of us may have been raised in households where love was given out as a reward for marks at school or success in sports. And the converse was true as well, with love being withheld when these goals were not met. Anyone whose family have treated them this way can tell you that this pattern is toxic. Sadly, many of us then go on to internalise this and to treat ourselves this way,
ereastman 8y ago
super soft
cbogie 8y ago
I have a lifelong philosophy of getting to about the 80th percentile of proficiency of any given activity, craft, sport, etc. A lot of the enjoyment I get from new things is in the rapid rate of improvement while learning and developing. After about the 80th percentile, diminishing returns kind of curse the activity, which is meant to provide leisure, pleasure, and well being. When it becomes a curse, those attributes are diminished. Also, to be in the 80th percentile, you could probably 'hang' with any range of folks involved in the thing, and if I ever want to get back into it after a break, it'll come back. Anyways, B- is quite satisfactory.
vparikh 8y ago
I think people just need to learn that the journey is the reward, not the mastery. We in the US are in many ways, over concerned with the perception of success and the outcome of an activity. Starts very early on -- "Winning isn't everything. Its the only thing"

500 points by anarbadalov 8y ago

"... there’s a deeper reason, I’ve come to think, that so many people don’t have hobbies: We’re afraid of being bad at them. Or rather, we are intimidated by the expectation — itself a hallmark of our intensely public, performative age — that we must actually be skilled at what we do in our free time." Yep.

matwood 8y ago
I have a lot of hobbies, some are team competitive and some are only competitive with myself. If I enjoy doing something, I don't care how bad I am at it when I start. I do like to see improvement though.
jarsin 8y ago
I love tennis and anytime someone finds out I spend money on lessons etc the response is typically Them: you know your not 20 anymore so you have no chance of going pro right? Me: Yep Them: (stares dumbfounded)
- ghaff 8y ago
  That seems weird. I haven’t taken skiing lessons in years but I certainly took them, as many friends did, long after the time there would have been any chance of pro. And I find it hard to believe tennis is much different. Lots of people take lessons who don’t have personal coaches in many sports.
  - chongli 8y ago
    I think people give skiing lessons a pass because you can break your neck if you make a mistake on the hill. You're a lot less likely to die while playing tennis.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Downhill skiing isn't really dangerous although you may fall a lot. We're not talking skydiving which you probably want some instruction with. I've taken lessons for skiing but to improve technique and enjoy the sport more, never because I was concerned about safety. Country Clubs and other places where people play sports like tennis and golf have regular lessons. It's not at all unusual for casual players. I'd add that I'm an instructor/leader for hiking courses with a local club that gets a few hundred people in programs in a typical year.
- RankingMember 8y ago
  Damn, you might want to not hang around that kind of negativity. Talk about a wet blanket.
gnarcoregrizz 8y ago
Heh. I don't disagree with that. I go full fledged hobby mode in most of the stuff I do, but I like competition. Unfortunately, I'll never be the best at anything I do. I have the 10% theory. That is, you can be top 10% in anything with deliberate practice and a really solid effort. After that, it gets exponentially harder, and natural ability plays a larger and larger effect. I'm really into cycling. I've been doing it all my life, but I broke into the top 10% with relative ease (judging by Strava). It took me a lot more consistent effort to break into the 5%, and a whole lot more effort (and some luck) to break into the 1-3%. Beyond that, there are some serious outliers who are just so much faster than even the 1%ers. Who knows though, maybe they're car KOMs or on e-bikes. In any case, I enjoy the competitive aspects of Strava, but some people think it ruins cycling.
- Xcelerate 8y ago
  I have the same theory, except that hard work can get about anyone into the top 1-2% instead of top 10% (well, except maybe for income. I’m talking strictly about hobbies).
  - photojosh 8y ago
    >> I broke into the top 10% with relative ease (judging by Strava) > except that hard work can get about anyone into the top 1-2% instead of top 10% Keep in mind that people on Strava are already self-selecting out of the general population, it is instead that 10% who are interested in measuring their performance compared to other cyclists/runners. So these claims are equivalent. Top 10% of the 10% = 1%.
raister 8y ago
I used to brew beer... Man, I sucked... A lot... Mainly due to high expectations set by my family, my friends, my co-workers, and so on. I ended up selling everything and going for bike riding - no one expects nothing from me now...
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mszcz 8y ago
Same thought here. I've been playing squash for like 4 years and I still very much suck at it. The reason I stuck with it soo long is that we don't count points when we play. It's just for the fun of it, for the running, the goofy plays etc. Recently though I'm not enjoying it as much as I used to. What I realised is that, because of the way we've been playing it, I also have the mental comfort of just walking away from it the second it stops being enjoyable without the feeling of "wasting" a couple of years.
- dv35z 8y ago
  Hah! Surprised to see squash mentioned here - such a great game. Similar to you, I love it, but am fairly bad at it (compared to the “average” person I see on the courts). That said, I’ve recently got a resurgence of excitement out of it by: (1) paying for lessons once a week (I committed an pre-paid for 20 lessons) (2) Attending the weekly/bi-weekly round-robins; playing/meeting people there. Anyone who I have fun, spirited rallies with, I get their contact info (3) once a week (I put a calendar reminder), I look at my next two weeks, and I email blast my list of squash contacts and get games scheduled in (4) my gym uses ClubLocker, which has a ranking system. Sometimes I try to “gamify” the sport by looking up people just above me in ranking, and seeing if I can beat them. (5) once in awhile, I’ll try to turn some of the squash buddies into “real” friends - suggesting a post-squash beer, etc. It’s been really fun, and made a few real friends this way! Nothing groundbreaking, but it’s been fun lately. Happy squashing!
devmacrile 8y ago
Keith Johnstone has a nice passage in his book Impro where he likens adults to atrophied children (which applies to hobbies of a more artistic bent): "If he believed he was a transmitter, rather than a creator, then we'd be able to see what his talents really were." "We have an idea that art is self-expression - which historically is weird... Once we believe that art is self-expression, then the individual can be criticized not only for his lack of skill, but for simply being what he is."

the_cat_kittles 8y ago

great premise, well articulated. its fairly obvious to me that capitalism in our current environment generates insane winner take all scenarios, which are partially responsible for this mentality of only doing things you are good at. the joy of learning is highest when you move from novice to intermediate, the maximum external reward is when you move from master to the best in the world.

apo 8y ago

If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you’re training for the next marathon. If you’re a painter, you are no longer passing a pleasant afternoon, just you, your watercolors and your water lilies; you are trying to land a gallery show or at least garner a respectable social media following. When your identity is linked to your hobby — you’re a yogi, a surfer, a rock climber — you’d better be good at it, or else who are you? Similar thoughts cross my mind every time I'm passed by a cyclist with a $2,500 bike wearing technicolor corporate spandex. As someone riding an ancient bike in a grubby, flapping getup, I sometimes wonder who's having more fun.

cmpolis 8y ago
Having been both riders in this situation - I'd speculate that you're the one having more fun. I went through phases of recreational cyclist -> competitive cyclist and racer -> back to recreational cyclist. Training and racing was immensely satisfying for the few moments when I would beat a personal best or place well, but it wasn't necessarily fun. The time, suffering and monetary cost of bike racing even on at the amateur-with-no-hope-of-going-pro level is crazy. The most fun I've had cycling was doing leisurely rides with friends or even just around the neighborhood with my partner.
ip26 8y ago
FWIW, riding in jeans gave me folliculitis, and a well maintained & fit bike is more pleasant to ride. Don't let the desire to separate yourself from the spandex crowd drive you to torture yourself.
- rubbingalcohol 8y ago
  Yeah, IMO the correct combination is spandex shorts and cheap cotton for everything else. Having nice gear doesn't mean you aren't having fun.
  - ip26 8y ago
    You don't have to have spandex for the legs, for me synthetic hiking pants have done fine, and also courds in the winter. The problem was basically two things- jeans were abrasive, wearing away hair follicles, and they didn't breathe, trapping a lot of sweat/humidity.

hkmurakami 8y ago

As a wise friend of mine once told me, “if it’s worth doing 100%, it’s worth doing half assed”

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eindiran 8y ago

Does this article match other people's experience? The whole opening premise, that few people have hobbies now seems entirely wrong to me. I can't think of anyone I know who doesn't have at least a few hobbies. Many people I know are significantly into several hobbies, and most people are at least casually invested in some.

rossdavidh 8y ago
I know people whose only hobbies seem to be watching TV and going to concerts, but then I have always known people like that, so perhaps it is not indicative of a trend either way.
FrankyHollywood 8y ago
Not really, I have hobby's just as my friends have them, but I feel rare. I don't use social media, and I don't have Netflix or hbo. As a software engineer I have a lot of screen time. At home sometimes I watch a movie or do some gaming, but I don't hit the 5hr average. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/media/nielsen-survey-media-viewing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/media/nielsen-su... Doing a lot non digital things in my free time is a conscious decision. The fun thing is you meet a lot of people who are active I as well.
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apocalypstyx 8y ago

As G.K. Chesterton said: "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." https://www.chesterton.org/a-thing-worth-doing/ https://www.chesterton.org/a-thing-worth-doing/

hypertexthero 8y ago
Alex Martelli quoted this in his “Good Enough” is Good Enough! talk at EuroPython some years ago: https://lwn.net/Articles/557406/ https://lwn.net/Articles/557406/ https://www.simongriffee.com/notebook/europython-2013-notes/#goodenough https://www.simongriffee.com/notebook/europython-2013-notes/...
hammock 8y ago
That is not so much praise of mediocrity, moreso praise of excellent strategy (which will result in positive outcome no matter how it is executed).
reaperducer 8y ago
I used to work with a guy who would say, "It's better than good; it's done." I don't know if that was his original, but I haven't heard it anywhere else.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
  It sounds like Horace.
- ggm 8y ago
  "I don't want it perfect, I want it by Thursday" -- J. Pierpont Morgan
- laichzeit0 8y ago
  I've heard something similar that goes "Done is better than perfect." While doing my Master's dissertation this has never rang more true and gives me great solace.
brian_cunnie 8y ago

TeMPOraL 8y ago

This... resonates strongly. Also, the Internet is both blessing and a curse here. On the one hand, you have free access to all the information and educational material you need to quickly get up to speed with pretty much any hobby imaginable. On the other hand, you also get to see so many people doing so much better than you. I find it subtly intimidating.

malvosenior 8y ago

It's easy not to care how good you are at your hobbies when you're already really good at something else. It takes a tremendous amount of time and energy to really master something. There just isn't time in the day left over to master multiple things. I'd like to think I'm pretty good at programming. I spend many hours a day doing it, have studied it for decades and pretty much have been completely obsessed with computers my whole life. From that standpoint it's really nice for me to have a few hobbies that are much less intense and where I can be "not good" but just enjoy myself. The position this article takes. That being said, if I wasn't an expert in my field, I may not be able to find that comfort in being middling at best in other areas. This I think is a lot of people's problem. The fear of failure (and in the west, anti-intellectual culture) stop people from even attempting to be great. Not at hobbies but at everything. So I think the article is correct, but missing hobbies are a second order effect after missing primary passion.

westoncb 8y ago
> It's easy not to care how good you are at your hobbies when you're already really good at something else. I've seen that at play, and it can be a very significant effect. The clearest instance from my personal experience was in self-studying mathematics. I began my regimen of study literally the day after finishing my CS degree. I'd had a 'repetitive strain injury' related to computer usage for years at that point, and had figured I would never be able to work as a programmer again (did a brief stint as a teenager). I needed to find something else and had been searching for a long time without luck—but now I had something: I'd just earn money doing mathematics somehow! It was grueling to work on at that time because it seemed like my last option for being able to do something that used my creative/technical abilities as a career (I was working at a grocery store then to put things in perspective)—and I just had no idea if I was going to be good enough with math for it to be a realistic possibility. So it was nerve-wracking anytime I attempted something that would test my ability. Several years later, after figuring out the computer use issues—I didn't need mathematics anymore. But I'd spent a lot of time learning, gaining proficiency, and developing interests in various areas; so at some point I got back into studying again. The difference is night and day—I'm far more productive, and it's just, by comparison to before, no big deal. Highly recommended if you can settle it with yourself that you're okay with things however they turn out in relation to some hobby/skill/whatever.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

Recently an elite marathon runner collapsed just before the finishing line - it turns out that "elite" athletes seem to simply ignore their bodies danger signals I honestly don't want to push myself that far. 10 minutes a mile is fine

ip26 8y ago
That's a bit of an oversimplification, but culturally I notice we prize success & effort & grit in the moment, and pay very little attention to training. This results in athletes who drive themselves over the brink trying to make up for their lack of training. A favorite quote of mine: The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  It's how everyone arrives on Survivor without knowing how to make a fire - what did you think was going to happen? I understand that the Venn diagram between "people narcissistic enough to be on reality tv" and "people who like to plan ahead" is probably the number 8, but even still, c'mon! edit: Survive? No, Survivor.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I haven’t watched for years. But, yeah, in the Bizarro world I was going to end up on the show you can be sure I would be fanatically reviewing past seasons and seriously practicing any skills that seemed relevant.
  - taneq 8y ago
    I came to the conclusion years ago that the selection criteria for shows like that is nothing to do with skills and everything to do with entertainment. They want a mix of pretty-but-dumb people, good-honest-family people, and assholes.
- lifeisstillgood 8y ago
  These are very well prepared elite athletes at the top of their game - not me running like hell and hoping to make up for it https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2018/04/15/agonising-moment-british-marathon-runner-collapses-two-miles-finish-line-7468518/amp/ https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2018/04/15/agonis... The coverage I read indicated he (and others) regularly pushed through body warning signs, but i can't find it now.

newnewpdro 8y ago

In the United States at least, there's a very popular hobby which many people won't admit to practicing: Consumerism. And thanks to the internet/smartphones/social media etc. It's practiced 24x7, while driving, from bed, from the toilet, it's always going on and it displaces time for and interest in creative pursuits for most.

extragood 8y ago
I agree that there are a lot of people practicing that. I also think that there are so many distractions, things designed to catch our attention, be addicting, and take our time, that it takes a concerted effort to allow ourselves to be bored. Boredom in itself isn't useful, but it gives us the opportunity to motivate ourselves into trying new things that aren't necessarily "fun" immediately.

linhub 8y ago

I think you should visit South America, everybody is either at just hanging out or doing their hobby after school/work.

doon123 8y ago
Hi, this sounds interesting! Could you please elaborate a bit more. Thanks.

Emma_Goldman 8y ago

I think one of the best possible desiderata for society is to reconfigure work so that we do a lot less of it, and so that less of our self-identity and self-respect depends upon it. By the way, for those that didn't realise, this article is clearly riffing off Bertrand Russell's well-known essay, 'In Praise of Idleness'.

afpx 8y ago
When I bring that up to many people, they gawk. That’s just abhorrent. But, at some point, that must be the end goal, right? For at least five generations, my ancestors have been working hard to “give their kids a better life.” But, at what point will the goal be to give one’s kids the time and resources to be idle? If I was president of the world, I’d make that Humanity’s moonshot project. Of course, it may not ever be possible. But, hey, there are 100 million people out there smarter than me. Surely, someone can figure it out.
- natalyarostova 8y ago
  >But, at some point, that must be the end goal, right? Not necessarily. For some of us work is itself the meaning we need from life. For me, it's not work-work, but it's learning new things. Idleness is extremely correlated with depression in myself. I can't be idle, or I get bad.
  - afpx 8y ago
    I agree. I like to work. I think most people do. But, people also like to work on what they want to, when they want to.
- chasote 8y ago
  Your comment reminded me of this quote even though it might not entirely fit the topic at hand: "I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematicks and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, musick, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelaine.” John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, May 12, 1780. As I said, it might not apply to this overall discussion but I've always found it quite poignant. Sadly society is more apt to ridicule those who still pursue liberal arts due to it's economic opportunity costs. While technically correct I believe that should come from the viewpoint that this could be considered a sad failure in humanity's progress.

deleted 8y ago

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watwut 8y ago

> If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block Jogging is really boring and those large goas are only way to make it fun. In the past, people typically were not jogging at all. It is not that competitions killed causual jogging - more that they made people stick with it and like it.

david-cako 8y ago

This is a phenomenon I think a lot about -- how globalization and the sheer amount of information we have available requires you to either drastically increase your expectations of yourself or drop them all together. Think about what being an alpha among a primitive group of humans (or apes) entails. It's part something that is internalized and demonstrated by that individual, and part reinforced socially by the rest of a small group of people who, within the context of the group, plainly recognize that individual as "best". This same dynamic exists for craftsmen among the group, for instance. Being at the top is always a function of where everyone else on your radar is at. It's just now you have to be your own cheerleader, because it's a much bigger pond. You have to make calculated decisions about how different things validate you (recreation vs greatness); being great at something in the 21st century really means putting your head down and having an unwavering faith in yourself. You have to keep lifting yourself back up, as the reward is always 10 steps out and always fleeting. At the same time, you now have an infinite amount of resources and inspiration for what you could become. You aren't limited by the nearest available expert, and you aren't limited by your imagination. It's all there for you to pick off the shelf.

curiousgal 8y ago
> ow globalization and the sheer amount of information we have available requires you to either drastically increase your expectations of yourself or drop them all together. As someone who grew up and studies in a third world country, seeing kids younger than me doing impressive things in Stanford for example is depressing as hell but compared to my peers, I am doing extremely well.
- rukittenme 8y ago
  If it makes you feel any better 90% of those achievements are crap and the other 10% depend heavily on older mentors who've spent their lives studying the topic.
  - 50 8y ago
    I completely agree. I would even go on to add that what is held at high regard in culture is often, may I say always, not that great. What makes something great, regardless of what it is, is the state of your inner self - which might sound like hogwash but to which I firmly hold to be true. And anyways, your life is so inexpressibly your own that to be mournful because someone has something you don't have, is on a path you would like to be, etc, is to render your life and your path not true and not fruitful to the greatest extent possible. As naive as all the above may sound.

greedo 8y ago

I've taken up woodworking as a hobby after not doing much in that vein since 7th grade. Using hand tools, not power tools, and taking time. One of the leaders in this movement is Paul Sellers [1], who couldn't be kindler and more inspirational. One of his key points that he stresses is that "It's not what you make, but how you make it." I know I'll never come close to the skill level he exhibits, but I hope to approach his level of sang froid and equanimity. [1] https://paulsellers.com/ https://paulsellers.com/

raister 8y ago
Yes. Paul Sellers is the best. As well as: - James Wright, Wood by Wright - https://www.woodbywright.com/ https://www.woodbywright.com/ - Tom Fidgen - The unplugged woodshop - Mike Siemsen - Rob Cosman - https://robcosman.com/ https://robcosman.com/ - Frank Klausz - Shawn L. Graham, Worth The Effort - http://wortheffort.com/index.html http://wortheffort.com/index.html - Roy Underhill - http://www.woodwrightschool.com/ http://www.woodwrightschool.com/ - Joshua Farnsworth, Wood and Shop - https://woodandshop.com/ https://woodandshop.com/ - James Hamilton, aka Stumpy Nubs - http://www.stumpynubs.com/ http://www.stumpynubs.com/ - Matthew Cremona, https://www.mattcremona.com/ https://www.mattcremona.com/ - Jay Bates, https://jayscustomcreations.com/ https://jayscustomcreations.com/ - Shannon Rogers, Renaissance WoodWorker, The Hand Tool School - http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/ http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/
- peatmoss 8y ago
  Man, this list deserves to be a post in its own right. Incidentally, the Woodwright’s Workshop show on PBS is part of the reason I donate to keep the “passport” access. Reruns of that show are pretty much the definition of my happy place.
pawelk 8y ago
Mr. Sellers is exceptional in his "good enough" attitude. Sometimes there are more or less precise measurements, slight differences and imperfections, etc, then he says "it's still going to last a hundred years". Also his "poor mans's" tools and ideas that demonstrate you don't have to get top of the line gear to make progress and create. I think the only areas where he aims for perfection are: tools as sharp as possible, and perfect right angles where it's important to be square. I used to be deep into photography, and these communities were strongly focused on gear. In the hand tool woodworking circles I get the feeling that gear is so much less important - of course you need a basic set of tools, but you can buy them vintage, 100 years old still in working condition and often cheap, and these will last you a lifetime, as they did for the previous owners. There are also brand new options, some more pricy than others, but I am yet to witness a heated discussion on why my brand of hand saws is better than yours, or why a single specific detail of a hand plane design makes it basically unusable on a pro level - which is the very kind of unproductive discussion that makes up a huge volume of photographer's forums. Also, I went back to photography with the attitude I have learned in wood working. Got a good enough mirrorless camera (still better specs than my last DSLR which was a semi-pro level equipment when I got it years ago). Dusted off my manual focus, USSR-made lenses and M42 adapter. It's a lot of fun again, these lenses are older than me and will last me a lifetime, just as my pre-WWII hand planes, saws and chisels. Since none of it is about the tools, it's how you use them and how much fun you have along the way.

dougmwne 8y ago

The American time use statistics make it pretty clear. Our hobby is watching television and using our phones. Anyone who says they have "no hobby" almost certainly spends hours of entertainment time each day at a screen. People just mean they have no other hobby aside from the default hobby. The same goes for anyone claiming they have no free time. No free time after sleep, work, kids and screen entertainment. It's not at all clear to me that people WANT a different hobby than the one they've got.

Eridrus 8y ago
Yeah, I'm not entirely clear what counts as a hobby and what doesn't. I went to a comedy show tonight. Does that count as a hobby? I don't think so, but it's also clearly a leisure activity. Does reading count as a hobby? It's still fairly passive, but less so than just watching. What about video games? Definitely not just passive, but how much do you have to play for it to be a hobby? I also have no idea where this claim that we're all to competitive to have hobbies comes from. I, like the tech bro stereotype, enjoy rock climbing, the only thing that gets in the way is my laziness, not comparing myself to those far better than myself. No-one I have climbed with has expressed status anxiety about what they can and cannot climb, though I admit to being a tad competitive with those who I am close in ability to. This author is in some super weird bubble that I have never really seen, but that's probably because I don't have kids, and that probably has a bigger impact than anything this article is talking about.

emmelaich 8y ago

I love this sentence: > Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence

egypturnash 8y ago

This is making me really want to either get back into dancing (burlesque and pole, so far, who knows what next) or finally pick up that cheap electric guitar I've wanted most of my life. Because one of the things I really liked about dancing was the room to be an amateur who is not constantly pushing to take her craft further, worrying about publicity and networking, etc - I was just some lady who was learning to dance. A lot of why I quit pole dance was feeling like I had gotten to the point where I was not going to see any more slow improvement unless I started seriously focusing on it like it was a major part of by life, and I don't have time for that.

jackconnor 8y ago

In addition to "worried about not being good at them", I think the competition for hobbies has greatly increased, too. My grandpa used to sit around on his porch in Indiana whittling because there was nothing else to do at night besides read and drink Budweiser (his other two favorite hobbies). Now, I can think of ten fun places to go at any hour and a million things I can do online and, all of a sudden, whittling doesn't seem so entertaining. That being said, I think that the author doesn't fully acknowledge modern hobbies (gaming comes to mind) which are part of staring at screens. In general, I believe we should always pursue hobbies we find enjoyable, no matter the difficulty, for their own sake, so maybe we just need to reset expectations a bit.

FooHentai 8y ago
That choice paralysis thing is a devil, too. I used to love video gaming and would hyper focus on a single game for months/years at a time. Now I have hundreds of games on Steam, most of which far exceed those earlier games in depth and quality, and I'm meh about the whole lot.

thebear 8y ago

I'd like to reinforce what an earlier commenter has already hinted at, with a story of a collapsing marathon runner. A lot of hobbies get much more dangerous with increased ambitions. Always ask yourself if that's worth it. As someone once said, "He who does not sore with the eagles does not get sucked into jet engines." And they didn't shoot Ringo, did they.

baddox 8y ago
Similarly, the early worm gets eaten.

Simon_says 8y ago

It sorta makes sense that the New York Times is advocating mediocrity.

paavoova 8y ago

the simple pleasure of doing something you merely, but truly, enjoy. I, for one, don't enjoy perpetually wallowing in mediocrity. The sense of fleeting time gone to waste weighs heavily on both the conscious and unconscious of my mind. There's a difference between not having a life's chance at being a competitive athlete but still trying within the best of your means to progress within the sport, and "taking it easy" and treating physical activity solely as occasional recreation. But this article argues for the latter - why? If you're not training for the next marathon, then why are you running in the first place? If you ask me, running the same pace, the same distance, year after year, is a waste of time no matter how much you enjoy it. And this viewpoint leads to slow decrepitude, because if you treat all of your hobbies so casually, you can never improve but only digress. Take physical activity, again, as an example: as you age, as natural hormonal production declines, as wear and tear builds up, that casual run around the block can only ever become more infrequent, more prone to injury, and thus slower and slower until one day you're not running at all. But striving to be the best runner you can be from the get-go, regardless if you have a chance at competitiveness, learning about health and longevity in the sport, will allow you to persevere far longer than the casual merely enjoying themselves on occasion. There's also general consumerism, which this article brings up for me. "Enjoyment", "fun", is largely inherent. It's then easy to say "have fun, enjoy yourself", because that goes without saying. It's far harder to put time and effort into an activity and derive pleasure from it, and the chance for failure is not only higher but more devastating. Develop chronic injury years into your sport of choice? It's over. Don't enjoy the Netflix show you're watching? Turn on another one until you do. Of course most people wouldn't consider watching Netflix a hobby. But that's only because they're at the lowest possible level of mediocrity, because, perhaps, they value cheap ideals of entertainment over all else. In reality, film and television as a medium spans over a century of arts and culture, waiting for you to delve into and master. But if you take this article to heart, you'll instead be content wallowing in the "simple pleasure" of consumption.

wtracy 8y ago

I had a little epiphany: Before the internet, and before people lived in large cities, the circle of people we came into contact might be only a couple hundred people. Out of two or three hundred people, it's not hard to be in the top tenth percentile at something. When your circle of acquaintances is the whole internet, being in the top tenth percentile of anything takes years of determined effort. Our brains still have expectations rooted in these smaller communities: That we should be able to create something exceptional and praiseworthy for our efforts. Today, it's hard to get praise for anything we do, unless it's from our families, or unless we do something truly world class. (Case in point: The other week someone shared some generative artwork here, and it got promptly criticized for not being "gallery worthy".) In the face of that, we instinctively give up.

deleted 8y ago
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spondyl 8y ago
"When your circle of acquaintances is the whole internet, being in the top tenth percentile of anything takes years of determined effort." I like that a lot and I'm going to add it to my bag of quotes. You're definitely not wrong and it can often feel like any hobby is pointless when you're surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of people (in online communities) who are striving for the same things.
nixpulvis 8y ago
Don't listen to the internet trolls, build connections with people who share common interests, and hopefully some of them will support you. I have personally found the older generations (I'm 25) to be more approachable. It's this that scares me. I'll bore you with a story from today. I'm building a coffee table for my new place. I got the top from Home Depot, and was looking for table legs. I was wondering around a vintage market and met this guy Jimmy, who has a studio down the street. He sold me 4 legs for $15 and gave me a bunch of great advise, telling me to text him when I was done with it. I assured him it wasn't going to be pretty, but he didn't care in the least. This is why I hate online shopping, and these are the interactions I cherish most.

lloyd-christmas 8y ago

A few scattered thoughts: Much of this article seems to only apply under the assumption that people didn't have hobbies prior to being a working adult. Most people I know have hobbies, but those hobbies were developed prior to being working adults. The article states: > most of us will be truly excellent only at whatever we started doing in our teens. So what about all of us that have had our hobbies prior to even being a teenager? I've been playing piano now for almost 3 decades. I played nearly every day from age 4 to the day I graduated college. By the article's admission, I'm supposed to be excellent by now. But... I've steadily gotten worse since becoming a working professional. I have my 5000+ hours of practice, but only a few hundred in decade since graduating. My experience when it comes to these hobbies is that most people drift away from their interests due to self-comparison, not societal comparison. The activities mentioned by the article seem to be of the everyday athletic variety. As adults, we're supposed to be conscious about our health. Nobody cares if you're a shitty runner when it's an expectation that you're health-conscious. The same can't be said for the arts and crafts variety of hobbies. The home brewer doesn't necessarily want you to try their shitty beer; The illustrator doesn't want to show their stick figures; The woodworker doesn't want you to sit in the chair that's probably going to break under your weight, regardless of whether or not they had fun making it. The office talk of "what did you do last night?" is a lot easier to answer with "went for a run"/"watched the same TV show as you" rather than having to follow up with the inevitable Q&A about your hobby. Let's say I mentioned that I was playing piano ("I've been playing since I was 4!"). The next time my team goes for drinks and there is a piano in the bar, people want to hear me play. Do I really want to publicly struggle to play a piece I was able to easily perform when I was 12? That doesn't sound like very much fun to me. > you are trying to land a gallery show or at least garner a respectable social media following People put their best foot forward, which also assumes they have a good foot to begin with. If you suck at something, you usually don't put it up on your Instagram. My point is really just that I don't talk about my hobby, and I assume that's also somewhat common for hobbies that aren't the typical everyday athletic variety. While I realize there are statistics that heavily back TV-as-a-hobby, I think the author has a bit of a selection bias and that there is under-appreciated amount of people that simply have no desire to discuss their hobbies. The discussion can detract from the enjoyment you get from the hobby itself.

Bucephalus355 8y ago

I came across an old Dow Chemical Company ad of chemists in a lab from the 1950’s a few weeks ago. Narrator: “As you can see, no geniuses here, just hardworking average Americans” Hearing that made me sad. I’m not sure why.

ambicapter 8y ago
Possibly the casual maligning of "smart people".

iamgopal 8y ago

Locally great, globally average ruined quite a few years for me, until I realised collecting like minded people is the actual goal.

sidcool 8y ago

How does one find satisfaction in such a world? It's almost impossible for everyone to be best at something. This brings me down immensely.

bkohlmann 8y ago

I recently completed the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, and we had an question and answer session with former President George W Bush. One of my classmates asked him about his painting hobby and if he was afraid of being bad or of critics. His reply will always stick with me. He said, “you can’t be afraid to try new things. If id expected perfection from the start, I would never have started. To learn requires making mistakes. I paint because I love it - and I don’t care what anybody else thinks.”

gexla 8y ago

There's also a large segment of the world in which people don't have time for hobbies because they are hustling to survive. As education, medical, housing, etc explode in costs while wages stagnate, we have to work harder just to get by. There are also a lot of angles the author might be missing by condensing a long article into small blog post. In the case of the jogger posting to social media and training for marathons, is this person picking up a hobby or is this person joining a tribe? If the social experience is greater than the activity, then this example makes sense. It might even be better for people who need the social experience more than they need the hobby. I stopped reading at that point. Maybe I missed something later in the article which addresses the above points.

projektir 8y ago

I think a different way to express this problem is comparative measurement vs absolute measurement. If you can make a good chair, you can make a good chair. It shouldn't be too relevant that someone else somewhere can make a good chair. The same is much harder to see, but is true for more sports-style activities. Someone who's decent at a sport is still worth respecting, in my view. But somewhere down the line we removed the "decent", "pretty good", and "respectable", and replaced it with "sucks", and removed all motivation to get to those levels. Now you're either the best or you don't count.

domador 8y ago

Why are we so fixated on ranking people, and strictly on a linear scale? As soon as you're measuring performance on more than one dimension, it becomes very hard to rank people. Multivariate competitions, for that matter, are more interesting to me. I get bored by Olympic disciplines with a one-dimensional metric (fastest time or longest distance, for the most part), but am far more interested in team sports where players show a lot of variation among multiple measurement categories. Participants in team sports can also show a lot more finesse, creativity, or even craziness than many an Olympian who is just trying to maximize a single physical quantity in a simple sport. Competition is often interesting and appealing, but I'd prefer if we didn't let it distract us in every single activity. In the athletic realm, it's refreshing for to read about many of parkour's expositors, who seem to deemphasize competition and focus on personal satisfaction. I don't know how prevalent this attitude is among its practitioners, but I know that if I ever took it up, I'd do for my personal enjoyment... and maybe to entertain some of my friends and family members. For parkour in particular, I'd probably enjoy it less if it was structured as a competition, rather than as free form activity where one gets to see where each participant decides to travel and how they decide to go about it, free from any expectation (other than moving and avoiding major injury). Moving away from athletic pursuits, why does it even matter who the top musician is in a given musical genre? What does that even mean? I don't care about who the "best" jazz instrumentalist is, but am instead glad that there a lot of great jazz musicians out there, whose music I can enjoy, whether they happen to be the best regarded or the most obscure. I only hope that everyone from the most popular artists "down" to local bands and street musicians can make a living doing what they love, which also happens to be something I enjoy to witness, regardless of whatever rank they may have on a given scale. Other than respect for others, we should not expect anything out of people that pursue a hobby or recreational interest for their own personal pleasure. For those creating or doing something for others to enjoy, maybe we just settle for a certain, subjectively satisfactory level of proficiency with a given discipline's skills, instead of insisting that everyone seeks to becomes the "best" at whichever activity they happen to be pursuing.

FrankyHollywood 8y ago

I think this goes far beyond just hobby's and leisure activities. Society as a whole doesn't seem to accept mediocrity anymore. Take a look at the actors from 80's hit movie 'Ghostbusters' http://cdn-media.hollywood.com/images/l/ghostbustersthetrio.jpg http://cdn-media.hollywood.com/images/l/ghostbustersthetrio.... Would these guys be casted today? I can't imagine, we see mostly perfect faces on television. Movies and television are not even the worst, advertising is insane. If you count the number of 'perfects' in some commercials you easily hear it 4 to 5 times in just a couple of seconds. You need perfect skin, a perfect dream kitchen, a perfect ride in a perfect car, etc. Why do people want this? Can't blame it all to hollywood...

julienreszka 8y ago

I dislike this article.

skrebbel 8y ago

Come to Europe, we're all super mediocre here and it's great. Less snarky, I find that attaching your identity to what you do is a profoundly American thing. "I'm a Rubyist", "I'm a runner", "I'm a Republican". The moment you are what you do, everything becomes so.. important. I'm not sure if this is just my filter bubble, but most people I know "like to make demos" (as in Demoscene[0]), "enjoy speed cycling on Sunday mornings", "run a business" and "voted for the social democrats last election". It's not just a semantic difference. BTW, if you really want to experience what I'm talking about, visit a demoparty. Some people making demos are really absurdly good at what they do, it's daunting (and still totally worthless btw). Nevertheless you'll see lots of other people make demos, and really do their best at it. They know they're going to lose the compo if at least one of the big shots have an entry, but they don't care. It's an absolutely wonderful experience. (and very encouraging) (and it sometimes makes you put out horrible crap that you're ashamed of later but hey it was fun at the time) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene

kerouanton 8y ago
+1 for your vision. I also love demoscene and am a former scener. The idea is not to be the best. The philosophy is to experiement, try, and have fun while discovering what we, or others, can achieve. My hobby is electronics. I'm learning every time I practice and the fun and rewarding part is that there is still a lot to learn and improve. That's what a hobby should be.
- apexalpha 8y ago
  >I also love demoscene and am a former scener. :D this is exactly what OP is about: you are a former scener? Or did you enjoy being part of the demoscene on your thursday nights?
  - skrebbel 8y ago
    Well I think he accidentally debunked me. Most people in the demoscene indeed refer to themselves as (demo)sceners. Hmm. I wonder how wrong this makes me about Republicans and Rubyists.

paraschopra 8y ago

What this article is clearly missing is that "hobbies" is a very modern concept. Humans never evolved to engage in semi-serious idle pursuits. We have evolved to compete and seek progress. What's happening is that the definition of competition and progress has been massively reconfigured due to social media. But even in pre-Industrial days, people worked hard to be better off, to accumulate wealth, to increase their social status. In fact, industrialization is a result of that ingrained work ethic. Asking people to be OK with mediocrity is like asking warring nations not to go to war. It's a well-intentioned but ultimately stupid advice because it doesn't work. What could work however is reconfiguring social media and environment: the less an individual gets exposed to competence, the more s/he'll be able to enjoy whatever s/he is enjoying.

Err_Eek 8y ago
I don't think that is entirely true -- surely, "hobbies" is a relatively new word, but even in pre-industrial times people had plenty of spare time to waste on stuff like learning songs/poems/card games/etc. Not every second was crucial for survival.

msiyer 8y ago

Finding the true strength hidden deep inside is the only way to not get lost in the chaos of achieving more than the other guy. Something Alexander Grothendieck said is so relevant: In those critical years I learned how to be alone. [But even] this formulation doesn't really capture my meaning. I didn't, in any literal sense learn to be alone, for the simple reason that this knowledge had never been unlearned during my childhood. It is a basic capacity in all of us from the day of our birth. However these three years of work in isolation [1945–1948], when I was thrown onto my own resources, following guidelines which I myself had spontaneously invented, instilled in me a strong degree of confidence, unassuming yet enduring, in my ability to do mathematics, which owes nothing to any consensus or to the fashions which pass as law....By this I mean to say: to reach out in my own way to the things I wished to learn, rather than relying on the notions of the consensus, overt or tacit, coming from a more or less extended clan of which I found myself a member, or which for any other reason laid claim to be taken as an authority. This silent consensus had informed me, both at the lycée and at the university, that one shouldn't bother worrying about what was really meant when using a term like "volume," which was "obviously self-evident," "generally known," "unproblematic," etc....It is in this gesture of "going beyond," to be something in oneself rather than the pawn of a consensus, the refusal to stay within a rigid circle that others have drawn around one—it is in this solitary act that one finds true creativity. All others things follow as a matter of course. Since then I've had the chance, in the world of mathematics that bid me welcome, to meet quite a number of people, both among my "elders" and among young people in my general age group, who were much more brilliant, much more "gifted" than I was. I admired the facility with which they picked up, as if at play, new ideas, juggling them as if familiar with them from the cradle—while for myself I felt clumsy, even oafish, wandering painfully up an arduous track, like a dumb ox faced with an amorphous mountain of things that I had to learn (so I was assured), things I felt incapable of understanding the essentials or following through to the end. Indeed, there was little about me that identified the kind of bright student who wins at prestigious competitions or assimilates, almost by sleight of hand, the most forbidding subjects. In fact, most of these comrades who I gauged to be more brilliant than I have gone on to become distinguished mathematicians. Still, from the perspective of thirty or thirty-five years, I can state that their imprint upon the mathematics of our time has not been very profound. They've all done things, often beautiful things, in a context that was already set out before them, which they had no inclination to disturb. Without being aware of it, they've remained prisoners of those invisible and despotic circles which delimit the universe of a certain milieu in a given era. To have broken these bounds they would have had to rediscover in themselves that capability which was their birthright, as it was mine: the capacity to be alone.

vinayms 8y ago

I really like the spirit of the article, and I sympathize with it. One visible example of this phenomenon is wrt fitness. We often hear gym goers doing "training" rather than "exercising". That usage in itself shows a sense of vanity, may be a result of general identity crisis, because most of these don't compete in anything sports-y, leave alone "strength games"; they train to train more it seems. I am not saying they ought to compete, that would be against the spirit of the article which I like, but I am just saying that even when they don't commit to such achievement oriented pursuit in action, they do it with words. Most are into fitness to improve their aesthetics but here too they set unreasonable goals. The level of obsession is unbelievable. They do the most difficult lifts with the heaviest weights and constantly monitor the "gains", because anything less is for the sissies. They are the real world Dom Mazzettis.

forgottenpass 8y ago
>We often hear gym goers doing "training" rather than "exercising". That usage in itself shows a sense of vanity, may be a result of general identity crisis You're reading way too much into a domain-specific term. "Training" is just when you have a regimented exercise schedule and routine to improve your body. Of course there do exist gym rats with motivations and goals a more reasonable person would consider obsessive. That's because there are for any pursuit. But your post is a long just-so story about a kind of person that the HN audience is predisposition to dislike.
- vinayms 8y ago
  > You're reading way too much into a domain-specific term. "Training" is just when you have a regimented exercise schedule and routine to improve your body. On the same lines, one can rationalize the empty words such as "synergy" that corporate marketers use routinely that are taken apart brutally routinely.

expathacker 8y ago

Check out Victor Wooten's Ted Talk on thinking about music as a language. He compares learning music with learning to talk. The general premise: "Nobody waits until you're an expert in language before being allowed to speak, why are you expected to be a master before you can make music with other musicians?". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zvjW9arAZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zvjW9arAZ0

whatever_dude 8y ago

I think this a sidee effect of the _goal driven_ mentality so common in the US. You're never just doing something for your enjoyment; you're doing it for a goal. It's never, ever, about the journey; it's absolutely always about the destination. Of course someone in that position won't enjoy a hobby: unless they can be the best at it, and do it for a reason (money, social status), they won't do it. Yesterday I was in the train and I overheard two young girls talking. One of them said she hoped she'd be made captain of her sports team at school, "because it would look good for college". That's it. That's the whole reason. Fill a role not because you want to contribute, or because you think you'd be good at it, but because it will be one more bullet point in a few years. This is part of a trend where I see kids growing being instructed to use 100% of their time with goal achievements. Leisure time is a reason for shame. Hobbies would just be a waste your time. You can't _find out who you are_; instead you just need to check the imaginary boxes set by someone else that will guarantee a superficially successful life.

RankingMember 8y ago
And one of the end results I see (and have done myself) is people give up as soon as they see they're not immediately a natural at something.

vpwp 8y ago

It's quite liberating to be totally shit at everything and fail everybody's expectations. For some reason we all hit rock bottom at some point. I'm reminded of this talk from Simon Sinek when somebody at Google asked him what his worst moments in life were - a rather weird question, but the answer was great - his life was falling apart and that somehow led him to do more: https://sahilparikh.com/simon-sinek-the-finite-and-infinite-games-of-leadership-talks-at-google-e7c490299e5b https://sahilparikh.com/simon-sinek-the-finite-and-infinite-... I see adults around me all the time - not doing things. We all have something that holds us back, and it would seem the more successful we are, the more we are held back. Like it was pretty weird when Michael Jordan started playing baseball https://www.bleachernation.com/2017/02/07/michael-jordans-baseball-career-is-the-most-impressive-thing-he-ever-did/ https://www.bleachernation.com/2017/02/07/michael-jordans-ba... but then the question sort of becomes - wait, what does everybody do instead? Why don't every great athlete go try some other random sport instead? And likewise - why don't we all just go and do it, whatever the "it" may be for ourselves.

coleifer 8y ago

It's risky to tie up your ego, or sense of self, with being anything other than yourSelf. When I started out coding in my career I had a huge chip on my shoulder. I needed a popular project on github, I needed to be given that big new project, I needed the recognition and praise of others. I didn't realize I was setting myself up for a lot of angst. And I'm ashamed of some of the things I did or said trying to protect my ego, which was now bound up in being seen by others as a genius programmer. Took me 7 or 8 years to figure it out and let go.

Myrmornis 8y ago

It’s partly the fault of high street retail. Go into a shop to buy running shoes, and you’re greeted by this barrage of technical nonsense about “pronation” and details of your running gait and what sort of support you “need”. of course, it’s just an obvious ruse to get normal people to buy expensive products, but it contributes to the atmosphere described in the article. I do blame US retail culture, but the UK is so culturally coupled to the US in retail that it’s long been the way in the UK also. I’ve even been videod running on a treadmill to perform gait analysis as if I were a pro athlete! It’s embarrassing that people suck this all up. But it’s not just running, try buying a tent or sleeping bag from an outdoor store like REI in the US. “So what sort of camping do you usually do? What altitude do you normally camp at?” “Dude I just want a fucking sleeping bag.”

gerbilly 8y ago

Part of the drive to be the best may be due to conditional love. Some of us may have been raised in households where love was given out as a reward for marks at school or success in sports. And the converse was true as well, with love being withheld when these goals were not met. Anyone whose family have treated them this way can tell you that this pattern is toxic. Sadly, many of us then go on to internalise this and to treat ourselves this way,

ereastman 8y ago

super soft

cbogie 8y ago

I have a lifelong philosophy of getting to about the 80th percentile of proficiency of any given activity, craft, sport, etc. A lot of the enjoyment I get from new things is in the rapid rate of improvement while learning and developing. After about the 80th percentile, diminishing returns kind of curse the activity, which is meant to provide leisure, pleasure, and well being. When it becomes a curse, those attributes are diminished. Also, to be in the 80th percentile, you could probably 'hang' with any range of folks involved in the thing, and if I ever want to get back into it after a break, it'll come back. Anyways, B- is quite satisfactory.

vparikh 8y ago

I think people just need to learn that the journey is the reward, not the mastery. We in the US are in many ways, over concerned with the perception of success and the outcome of an activity. Starts very early on -- "Winning isn't everything. Its the only thing"