in other words, how to fail

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Think of it as a game.

A year ago, I decided I wanted to learn snowboarding. I never skiied, so I made it a game to learn a totally new skill as fast as possible. Today, most ski groups I go with are shocked at how fast I learned. Traps that apply to everything: consuming content without, getting expensive gear, being with a group of beginners who are worse than you. For anyone that doesn’t know, it’s just not very common to become capable in a week or so. I was lucky — my prefrontal cortex has mostly developed (can take feedback + iteration), but not enough that I was still fearless and overly arrogant.

Confidence comes with trying hard things and failing.

I have a great regard for classes, but I wanted to prove it to myself I could knew how to learn. Once I got my rental, I tried snowboarding down the bunnies (easiest hills for beginners + children). My black diamond skiier friends all left me, so I would go down the hill, fall every movement, and watch a YouTube tutorial while my bruised, whiplashed body recovered. After a while, I got the hang of the basics and I wasn’t falling as much … but I also stopped improving. At that point, it dawned on me I stopped improving because I was scared of falling. I needed to fail more to learn more. I skipped the Greens (the next level) and decided to go on the Blues (far longer trails = faster iteration cycles).

It’s all about practice.

Don’t get me wrong: despite my fast start, I am not doing 360 tricks on my snowboard. The other thing is that even if you’re learning and getting better exponentially, time restricts you. If you are propelled only by the beginner gains, you will hit the dunning-kruger troph instantly. To avoid this, I consider much of my learning at this stage play. It reframes the situation in order for me to let go of the week by week numbers, allowing myself to try things and make mistakes. Commit to your learning on a high level as a Professional, rather than as a silly hobby with no end goal, but do not allow the numbers dissuade you.

Natural talent does not really matter.

I’ve always felt an uncanny confidence that I can always beat out rivals — regardless of their headstart, I can always learn faster and work harder. I’ve internalized this by seeing it play out in running, programming, etc. Of course, there’s a different time window to become competitive for everything (for me, most discrete videogames are not too hard, but competition-level math timeline is long). The timeline to NBA is probably out of range now. But deep down, I’ve always felt everything was in reach for me. Permission is granted by myself to be good at something. Yet I don’t think I have a natural knack for everything at all. But it has always felt strange to me that others would consider themselves a “math person” or not, especially when the math at hand is anything easier than real analysis.

Still, it needs to be a game worth playing.

For example, Super Smash bros. I didn’t really play smash as a kid, whereas everyone did. So when new college friends with 18 years of experience combo’d me to oblivion, I realized just how far I would need to go. I’m hypercompetitive, so I took a few strides into learning how to reliably beat my friends. But to really be good, I realized it wasn’t something worth grinding for.

A large part about learning is realizing that, even if you learn to learn fast, becoming great will take a long time. And that time will pass anyways, so the most important thing is picking the right games to play. If you can figure what to do and how to do it, the world is yours.