There was a really fascinating article in the January 18th issue of New Yorker about a book called “Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning”. In this book (which I guess I’ll have to read), the author touts the benefits of beginning to learn new things.
Much has been written about the importance of mastering skills. Somewhere, someone says it takes 10,0000 hours to master something, and so we are led to believe that anything that falls short of “mastery” is a waste of time and a shame.
And we do feel shame, don’t we, when we take something up, try it for a while and then give it up? We all do it – aren’t our attics filled within the remnants of hobbies picked up and abandoned/ They’re in the attic to hide the shame of being a quitter, something Americans loathe. There are no inspirational stories about people who tried to achieve something and failed.
But remember what it feels like to embark on a learning journey. “I’ve taken up knitting!”, you announce to your friends. You buy the yarn, the knitting needles, study up, and begin what you hope will be a lifelong pursuit that culminates in highly skilled output. No one you know will be in want of a knit cap or a sweater, you’re thinking. You’re thrilled as your skill grows. But then, somewhere along the way, you’re diverted, through boredom, time restraints, or another shiny object, and your knitting stuff goes into your personal Hall of Shame.
This book presents studies that indicate that starting a new endeavor is often the most beneficial part of the exercise – even when you give up. Oddly still, people tend to do better in these endeavors when they over-do it – take up several things at once.
We all know children create neural connections as they learn, and most of us assume that process slows down as you age, going from the excitement and growth stage to the “Now, why did I come into this room?” stage. And that’s true to some degree – our brains’ ability to make new neural connections does slow as we age, but not all cognitive functions slow down at the same rate, so we do benefit from learning any time we learn.
So I told you all that, to tell you this (paraphrasing Ron Thomason): Let’s remove the stigma on taking up new things and later abandoning them. Sooner or later, some of things will fire our imagination and passion to make them lifelong pursuits, but many (if not most) will, after the initial acquisition phase end up in our discard pile. However the time between taking up that “hobby” and the time it’s consigned to “things I used to do” is actually time well-spent. Don’t get so caught up in goals and destinations that you lose sight of the value of the journey.
