Don't worry about mastery -- seek competence
You’ll be heading downhill. How hard can that really be?
I talk to so many people who express regret over not having learned to play a musical instrument.
However, this regret is not enough to lead them to learn one now. They feel as though it’s too late.
Well, sure, if you start learning piano today, you’re probably not going to catch up to Elton John. However, you may really enjoy learning how to play your first chords. Within weeks, you could be playing a version of “Rocket Man” that’s good enough to bring out at a family gathering.
If you adjust your expectations, you can experience the delight of, “Whoa, I’m actually playing the piano!” right away.
When only the pinnacle of success will satisfy us, there’s no point in even taking the first step. But when we’re willing to enjoy every step along the journey, we may be surprised to discover that we can get pretty good at what we’re doing, long before we expected to.
We may not be able to carry out the hardest or most complex tasks, but we can do really well at basic or intermediate ones.
For example, when I began learning to knit, I was objectively bad at it. But within just a few weeks, I could make a good-looking hat. It might be simple, but a simple hat will still keep you warm. There’s still plenty to learn as a knitter, but I have a basic level of competence that allows me to make useful things.
Even if you are far from being an expert chef, you can still make some tasty dishes that allow you to feed yourself and your family. You’ve probably got enough skills to learn new recipes when you feel like it or step up your game for a special occasion.
It would be absurd to never cook yourself a single thing because you aren’t going to be The Best at cooking. And yet, we deprive ourselves of fun and interesting opportunities all the time because we don’t think we’ll be good enough to make an impact. We refuse to acknowledge the skills we have because they’re not as good as someone else’s or don’t meet an arbitrary standard we’ve set for ourselves.
Life is much happier, and work more productive, when we recognize that twenty years of experience in a given field is often the result of a number of hours dedicated to building competence at the start, and then maintaining that level of competence from that point forward.
Once you build competence, you can deliberately seek out new challenges to become a master of your craft, but you don’t have to. You can cook the same dozen meals over and over in order to feed yourself for the rest of your life.
If you want to be an Olympic figure skater, your only option is probably a time machine so that you can get thousands of hours on the ice with a trainer by the time you’re in high school. However, if you want to learn how to skate for fun, you can be doing that by the end of the day.
After a few months of consistent effort, you’ll have people telling you that they wish they had the talent to be as good as you, but that ship has sailed and it’s too late. Be prepared for them to not believe you when you say that you just started recently and they could do what you have done.
Do you believe me? What would you want to learn how to do if you knew that it would take months instead of years?