4 ms·

> Learning is not a leisure activity Depends on what you're learning. My main non-scrolling hobby is music. Parts of learning to play better are hard work tha

> Learning is not a leisure activity Depends on what you're learning. My main non-scrolling hobby is music. Parts of learning to play better are hard work that require conscious effort, but the majority of time I spend on it is practice, which I find to be very relaxing and fun. I imagine the same is true for lots of other hobbies.

Jensson 5y ago
> Parts of learning to play better are hard work that require conscious effort, but the majority of time I spend on it is practice If you practice without conscious effort then you aren't practicing, you are just playing and almost surely isn't improving. There is a reason hobbyist stop improving early and then never improve even after years or even decades of practice, it is because they spend their quality focus and effort on their job rather than their hobby and therefore can't improve like professionals who gets paid to focus on it.
- peterkelly 5y ago
  > If you practice without conscious effort then you aren't practicing, you are just playing and almost surely isn't improving This is true to an extent, but at least with music there's sort of a spectrum of difficult -> automatic (i.e. hard work -> pleasure) as you build up muscle memory. I played piano for many, many years without making conscious effort to improve, and, like you described, I didn't get any better. Once I decided to get serious and start taking lessons again things changed; it gave me an external incentive to make progress each fortnight and practice daily. There's an element of it that feels like pressure at first (its easier and more tempting to play something I already know than to work on a new song/exercise), but once I get the basics of it right and enter the phase of repeated practice to improve, that's where the fun part comes which I genuinely enjoy. With a bit of practice it becomes automatic and I can just enjoy the process and experiment with whatever comes into my mind (this is with jazz, not sure how it applies to other genres) I find it an extremely therapeutic experience.

Jensson 5y ago

> Parts of learning to play better are hard work that require conscious effort, but the majority of time I spend on it is practice If you practice without conscious effort then you aren't practicing, you are just playing and almost surely isn't improving. There is a reason hobbyist stop improving early and then never improve even after years or even decades of practice, it is because they spend their quality focus and effort on their job rather than their hobby and therefore can't improve like professionals who gets paid to focus on it.

peterkelly 5y ago
> If you practice without conscious effort then you aren't practicing, you are just playing and almost surely isn't improving This is true to an extent, but at least with music there's sort of a spectrum of difficult -> automatic (i.e. hard work -> pleasure) as you build up muscle memory. I played piano for many, many years without making conscious effort to improve, and, like you described, I didn't get any better. Once I decided to get serious and start taking lessons again things changed; it gave me an external incentive to make progress each fortnight and practice daily. There's an element of it that feels like pressure at first (its easier and more tempting to play something I already know than to work on a new song/exercise), but once I get the basics of it right and enter the phase of repeated practice to improve, that's where the fun part comes which I genuinely enjoy. With a bit of practice it becomes automatic and I can just enjoy the process and experiment with whatever comes into my mind (this is with jazz, not sure how it applies to other genres) I find it an extremely therapeutic experience.