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The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something

163 points by danboarder 5y ago

drewcoo 5y ago
That's not about the benefits of being terrible. It's about the benefits of improving and mastering skills. Some things I'd rather just enjoy being terrible at. I make bad art badly, for instance, with no self-pressure to even attempt to be good. And no desire to consult a life coach to see if I'm doing "wrong" right. It's cathartic!
- danboarder 5y ago
  @drewcoo I hear you, I did get this concept from the article too, with the example of a young child that is happy to try new things and just enjoy it. I think the improvement and learning or getting good at things is a side effect. Beyond just having fun doing new things, mastering new things can be an entirely different pursuit with it's own rewards but perhaps takes a lot longer (the "10,000 hour rule" concept that Malcolm Gladwell writes about in his book Outliers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29 ).
  - p00dles 5y ago
    If you're interested, David Epstein wrote a book called "Range" that provides an alternate viewpoint to the 10,000 hour rule. I found Epstein's model resonated more for me than the 10k rule. https://davidepstein.com/the-range/ https://davidepstein.com/the-range/
chousuke 5y ago
I'm envious of people who are good at being bad. It's a skill that lets you choose how to develop yourself. I've noticed that it's really difficult for me to be bad at something, by which I mean that of my brain hasn't decided that it really needs to keep doing something, I gravitate towards things that I'm already decent at even if I don't really feel like I enjoy it. Doing even things that I might initially enjoy quickly becomes extremely stressful if I can't observe myself making progress. Forcing things works for a while, but is not sustainable. Sometimes there's also this weird disconnect between what I want to work on and the things my unconscious brain wants to work on, and that does get stressful as well.
- fibonachos 5y ago
  This plus the anxiety of thinking you are bad at everything despite evidence to the contrary.
  - chousuke 5y ago
    I think part of that is the fact that the better you become at something, the better you are at recognizing how much you don't know; and I think that that skill generalizes, so over time you can get overwhelmed trying new things because you can "instantly" see how much you're missing, especially if you have no transferrable skills that apply.
    - gnomespaceship 5y ago
      I definitely get this with speaking foreign languages - English feels like a second mother tongue to me at this point, but even though I can create Spanish sentences, I get choked up when about to speak.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  I have the opposite problem. As soon as I become remotely competent at something, I have a hard time bringing myself to do it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - username90 5y ago
    You can fix that by raising the bar for which you feel you are "remotely competent". If you consider anyone below world class to not be remotely competent then you'll be world class before you give up.
    - medstrom 5y ago
      Alternatively, keep piling on new ways of doing something, like raising the difficulty slider in a video game to keep it challenging.
metters 5y ago
I suck at karaoke, but it is so much fun. Even more because I am so bad at singing. My friends usually cannot stop laughing when my voice starts to break. It would be enjoyable too with a good voice I guess, but I do not wanna miss the times we had fun singing with my poor voice
- WalterBright 5y ago
  The whole point of karaoke is being bad at it!
- euroderf 5y ago
  There is a very persuasive argument that karaoke is totally punk rock. No requirement to be especially competent; just bring the desire.
- rkachowski 5y ago
  karaoke really clicked for me when I really embraced the fact there is no way to win. It's not about making people laugh or singing perfectly or impressing people, it's literally just cutting loose and enjoying yourself.
- laurieg 5y ago
  There's nothing more awkward than 1 good singer surrounded by bad singers at a karaoke box. It's amazing how they can completely nail a song and put everyone off singing.
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    Yeah! it completely takes the fun out of it. Usually it is a group of good singers that monopolize the stage or look down bored at the normal people who is there just to have fun. I've been at places even when I distinctly feel a hint of physical aggression from one of those pros taking the microphone from me after my song. really bad vibe.
colordrops 5y ago
Being very bad at something means that you will work through it without ego. You haven't yet attached your self worth to the thing, so you don't care how you are perceived at doing the thing. I struggled so much studying computer science in college just because I was afraid of looking like I didn't know something, instead of realizing that I was supposed to not know these things because I never encountered them before. I took some biology courses for fun, and easily got the top grades in the class because I had no attachment to the result or subject matter.
- tayo42 5y ago
  This is interesting because I feel the exact opposite is true. I suck at most things that I guess aren't really my regular hobbies. I also don't feel a need to try hard at them. Like I just skateboard for fun, its not a thing I really identify with, I'm definitely not progressing much at it. The things I do regularly, like if you asked me "what do you do" I work harder at it, it sucks to suck at the things you like to do. That's motivation for me. I guess I'm surprised in the case of your computer science you wouldn't find that motivating
  - colordrops 5y ago
    This was 25 years ago. I've long ago made the shift more to your line of thinking and motivation.
domano 5y ago
I enjoy doing things i am unexperienced or bad in, since this removes a lot of expectations people have and i am generally a fast learner. Actually doing stuff i am good at stresses me out sometimes! Maybe imposter syndrome or my fear of it actually being Dunning-Krueger :)
tayo42 5y ago
> particularly in these times of change and disorder, openness to experience is also a good way to prevent anxiety. I thought this was a weird conclusion. I think of my self as pretty open to experience (maybe there's a unintuitive definition for this I'm unaware of?) But that is a conclusion I don't really relate to. I guess I'm open to new things but quite so "go with the flow". Seems contradictory out loud but I can't be the only person who feels that way. Also, I feel like this article seems to suggest mastery is achievable if you just work hard enough. My life experience with my own attempts to master things suggests otherwise. I don't know if everyone has it in them to actual master something.
- giu 5y ago
  I think openness to experience is only one part of the equation. There are other parts, e.g., what are your goals? How do you deal with your emotional state if the experience doesn't go your way? And many more. It's quite complex. There is a treatment called exposure therapy [0] which actually is used to threat anxiety and for one helps with emotional processing. [0] https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exposure-therapy https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exp...
amelius 5y ago
Probably similar to the mental benefits of being the underdog.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I really enjoyed this article. It reflects my experience. I used to have a teacher that would say “Any day I don’t learn anything new, is a day that I died.” I’ve always been good at picking up new stuff, and understanding difficult concepts, but these days, I have made a conscious decision to do one thing, and do it as well as possible. I’m probably at 90%. I’m fully aware that I’ll never be 100%. That makes it fun. I like challenges.
motohagiography 5y ago
The big difference is when you learn something as a kid, you "become," something, where as an adult, it's just another thing you do, at least until you have spent more of your life doing it than not, and few, if anyone, remember a time when you didn't. This is a skill I've developed, and it's as difficult as anything. I've been taking lessons from masters at things for the last decade and more, and the ability to become a student as an adult is very liberating, even if the freedom has difficult moments. The professional benefits have also been huge, since being able to bring real confidence to situations where you are not an expert is a significant leadership trait. The confidence comes from knowing your own boundaries and being able to recognize expertise in others and use it instead of trying to emmulate it. You can also recognize skill much faster. Imagine learning to read music as an adult and asking what the names of the strings are, what the dots on the page mean, why it doesn't resemble this other thing you think you know about, and why your skill in one area doesn't import into this one. The only path forward is work and practice. I'd imagine learning to speak a new language would be similar, where your skill level is beneath that of children. The key is to do say, "I am going to suck at this until I suck less at it." and then the huge piece is forgiving yourself the natural conceits that your adult mind/ego puts in your way, after recognizing them. To become a student means to accept vulnerability, sometimes humilitation, even shame for the things you do wrong when you realize why you do them, and then deal with them in the psychological present instead of as just being a kid who grows out of it. You can expect it to take 5-10 years to get as good or better than most of the kids who did something growing up. Having that horizon in mind is useful because it makes the present less urgent. Start it for the challenge, but finish it for the pleasure.
- p00dles 5y ago
  +1 to challenge of learning a language as an adult. I feel that once you get older, you aren't in as many situations where you don't know what you're doing. Partially because it sucks to not know what you're doing, so you avoid those situations, and partially because you simply get better at the things that you do over time. It's been helpful for me to remember that for every expert, there was a time when they were the same level as you are.
- imtringued 5y ago
abhinav22 5y ago
Be bad at things you don’t want to do. Be good at things you want to do. That way people don’t typecast you into roles you don’t want to do and typecast you to roles you do want to do. (This is in the workplace). Wish I learnt this earlier!
b3morales 5y ago
> When you become a beginner, you are, as much as anything, training your curiosity—and the related trait of openness to experience. Are the Big 5 traits something you can actually train on? I've never seen anything to indicate that. I thought they were considered inherent. Would love more info if I have it wrong.
- gowld 5y ago
  The big 5 traits are merely correlations that appear in personality survey questionnaires.

163 points by danboarder 5y ago

That's not about the benefits of being terrible. It's about the benefits of improving and mastering skills. Some things I'd rather just enjoy being terrible at. I make bad art badly, for instance, with no self-pressure to even attempt to be good. And no desire to consult a life coach to see if I'm doing "wrong" right. It's cathartic!

danboarder 5y ago
@drewcoo I hear you, I did get this concept from the article too, with the example of a young child that is happy to try new things and just enjoy it. I think the improvement and learning or getting good at things is a side effect. Beyond just having fun doing new things, mastering new things can be an entirely different pursuit with it's own rewards but perhaps takes a lot longer (the "10,000 hour rule" concept that Malcolm Gladwell writes about in his book Outliers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29 ).
- p00dles 5y ago
  If you're interested, David Epstein wrote a book called "Range" that provides an alternate viewpoint to the 10,000 hour rule. I found Epstein's model resonated more for me than the 10k rule. https://davidepstein.com/the-range/ https://davidepstein.com/the-range/

chousuke 5y ago

I'm envious of people who are good at being bad. It's a skill that lets you choose how to develop yourself. I've noticed that it's really difficult for me to be bad at something, by which I mean that of my brain hasn't decided that it really needs to keep doing something, I gravitate towards things that I'm already decent at even if I don't really feel like I enjoy it. Doing even things that I might initially enjoy quickly becomes extremely stressful if I can't observe myself making progress. Forcing things works for a while, but is not sustainable. Sometimes there's also this weird disconnect between what I want to work on and the things my unconscious brain wants to work on, and that does get stressful as well.

fibonachos 5y ago
This plus the anxiety of thinking you are bad at everything despite evidence to the contrary.
- chousuke 5y ago
  I think part of that is the fact that the better you become at something, the better you are at recognizing how much you don't know; and I think that that skill generalizes, so over time you can get overwhelmed trying new things because you can "instantly" see how much you're missing, especially if you have no transferrable skills that apply.
  - gnomespaceship 5y ago
    I definitely get this with speaking foreign languages - English feels like a second mother tongue to me at this point, but even though I can create Spanish sentences, I get choked up when about to speak.
brailsafe 5y ago
I have the opposite problem. As soon as I become remotely competent at something, I have a hard time bringing myself to do it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- username90 5y ago
  You can fix that by raising the bar for which you feel you are "remotely competent". If you consider anyone below world class to not be remotely competent then you'll be world class before you give up.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    Alternatively, keep piling on new ways of doing something, like raising the difficulty slider in a video game to keep it challenging.

metters 5y ago

I suck at karaoke, but it is so much fun. Even more because I am so bad at singing. My friends usually cannot stop laughing when my voice starts to break. It would be enjoyable too with a good voice I guess, but I do not wanna miss the times we had fun singing with my poor voice

WalterBright 5y ago
The whole point of karaoke is being bad at it!
euroderf 5y ago
There is a very persuasive argument that karaoke is totally punk rock. No requirement to be especially competent; just bring the desire.
rkachowski 5y ago
karaoke really clicked for me when I really embraced the fact there is no way to win. It's not about making people laugh or singing perfectly or impressing people, it's literally just cutting loose and enjoying yourself.
laurieg 5y ago
There's nothing more awkward than 1 good singer surrounded by bad singers at a karaoke box. It's amazing how they can completely nail a song and put everyone off singing.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Yeah! it completely takes the fun out of it. Usually it is a group of good singers that monopolize the stage or look down bored at the normal people who is there just to have fun. I've been at places even when I distinctly feel a hint of physical aggression from one of those pros taking the microphone from me after my song. really bad vibe.

colordrops 5y ago

Being very bad at something means that you will work through it without ego. You haven't yet attached your self worth to the thing, so you don't care how you are perceived at doing the thing. I struggled so much studying computer science in college just because I was afraid of looking like I didn't know something, instead of realizing that I was supposed to not know these things because I never encountered them before. I took some biology courses for fun, and easily got the top grades in the class because I had no attachment to the result or subject matter.

tayo42 5y ago
This is interesting because I feel the exact opposite is true. I suck at most things that I guess aren't really my regular hobbies. I also don't feel a need to try hard at them. Like I just skateboard for fun, its not a thing I really identify with, I'm definitely not progressing much at it. The things I do regularly, like if you asked me "what do you do" I work harder at it, it sucks to suck at the things you like to do. That's motivation for me. I guess I'm surprised in the case of your computer science you wouldn't find that motivating
- colordrops 5y ago
  This was 25 years ago. I've long ago made the shift more to your line of thinking and motivation.

domano 5y ago

I enjoy doing things i am unexperienced or bad in, since this removes a lot of expectations people have and i am generally a fast learner. Actually doing stuff i am good at stresses me out sometimes! Maybe imposter syndrome or my fear of it actually being Dunning-Krueger :)

tayo42 5y ago

> particularly in these times of change and disorder, openness to experience is also a good way to prevent anxiety. I thought this was a weird conclusion. I think of my self as pretty open to experience (maybe there's a unintuitive definition for this I'm unaware of?) But that is a conclusion I don't really relate to. I guess I'm open to new things but quite so "go with the flow". Seems contradictory out loud but I can't be the only person who feels that way. Also, I feel like this article seems to suggest mastery is achievable if you just work hard enough. My life experience with my own attempts to master things suggests otherwise. I don't know if everyone has it in them to actual master something.

giu 5y ago
I think openness to experience is only one part of the equation. There are other parts, e.g., what are your goals? How do you deal with your emotional state if the experience doesn't go your way? And many more. It's quite complex. There is a treatment called exposure therapy [0] which actually is used to threat anxiety and for one helps with emotional processing. [0] https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exposure-therapy https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exp...

amelius 5y ago

Probably similar to the mental benefits of being the underdog.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I really enjoyed this article. It reflects my experience. I used to have a teacher that would say “Any day I don’t learn anything new, is a day that I died.” I’ve always been good at picking up new stuff, and understanding difficult concepts, but these days, I have made a conscious decision to do one thing, and do it as well as possible. I’m probably at 90%. I’m fully aware that I’ll never be 100%. That makes it fun. I like challenges.

motohagiography 5y ago

The big difference is when you learn something as a kid, you "become," something, where as an adult, it's just another thing you do, at least until you have spent more of your life doing it than not, and few, if anyone, remember a time when you didn't. This is a skill I've developed, and it's as difficult as anything. I've been taking lessons from masters at things for the last decade and more, and the ability to become a student as an adult is very liberating, even if the freedom has difficult moments. The professional benefits have also been huge, since being able to bring real confidence to situations where you are not an expert is a significant leadership trait. The confidence comes from knowing your own boundaries and being able to recognize expertise in others and use it instead of trying to emmulate it. You can also recognize skill much faster. Imagine learning to read music as an adult and asking what the names of the strings are, what the dots on the page mean, why it doesn't resemble this other thing you think you know about, and why your skill in one area doesn't import into this one. The only path forward is work and practice. I'd imagine learning to speak a new language would be similar, where your skill level is beneath that of children. The key is to do say, "I am going to suck at this until I suck less at it." and then the huge piece is forgiving yourself the natural conceits that your adult mind/ego puts in your way, after recognizing them. To become a student means to accept vulnerability, sometimes humilitation, even shame for the things you do wrong when you realize why you do them, and then deal with them in the psychological present instead of as just being a kid who grows out of it. You can expect it to take 5-10 years to get as good or better than most of the kids who did something growing up. Having that horizon in mind is useful because it makes the present less urgent. Start it for the challenge, but finish it for the pleasure.

p00dles 5y ago
+1 to challenge of learning a language as an adult. I feel that once you get older, you aren't in as many situations where you don't know what you're doing. Partially because it sucks to not know what you're doing, so you avoid those situations, and partially because you simply get better at the things that you do over time. It's been helpful for me to remember that for every expert, there was a time when they were the same level as you are.
imtringued 5y ago

abhinav22 5y ago

Be bad at things you don’t want to do. Be good at things you want to do. That way people don’t typecast you into roles you don’t want to do and typecast you to roles you do want to do. (This is in the workplace). Wish I learnt this earlier!

b3morales 5y ago

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

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