The Process of Learning Everything

There is this simple "journey" that everyone goes through when they learn something new. If it were a graph, the difficulty of mastering anything would become exponentially harder as you pick up more and more little "tricks".

I like to break it down to 3 simple stages that everyone goes through.

When you first start to pick up any skill, assuming you have any sort of interest in it at all, certain "big" basics you will pick up relatively quickly compared to anyone else. For example, when you learn guitar, there's the 3 simple chords and voila cool sounding songs. If you learn pool, you pick up how to hit the ball in a semi-straight line and hit another ball. To put it in a nutshell, as soon as you finish picking up about 70% of the basics, you can pull off some pretty impressive tricks, of course to an outsider.

This stage feels the greatest because you feel like at this rate, you can master the game in a few more months. Mastering what seems like a very big part of the game or sport or hobby, is an immense morale booster.

Then we come to the intermediate stage. This is where you pick up the really small nuances that will polish you ability that much more. BUT, it is going to take up a lot of time and a heck of a lot of disappointment. The reason is because the only way you can go through and find out what you don't know, is to do it over and over again and by accident, come up with a certain way or tactic of doing it that makes it easier. And people can never really teach you these things because its more of a problem of you than a problem of the activity. If you were learning a martial art, a certain stance or twist of the muscle will improve your ability that little bit, but your sensei couldn't teach you that unless he is observing you extremely closely, or he is very professional.

This is the stage most people quit because to go through this much repetition without seeing as visible an improvement as the beginner stage puts a dampener on you. Something I came across puts this totally into perspective, and even cooler, it's in video AND image form.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

And then you go to the advanced stage. Now by this time the disinterested would have already dropped it, or at least stopped really trying to get better. This is really for Olympic athletes and the like. At this point, you're just going thru the motions to become what is essentially a machine at what you do, reduce mistakes. Like swimming for example, or tennis, where the winner is the last to make a mistake. It is incredibly difficulty to even reach this stage, but some do, and people who do are running on pretty much their passion. Which means, I probably will never reach this for anything because I have never felt passion, like ever.

So there you have it, just know that when things start getting tough, it just means you made it over the beginner stage and actually making some kind of progress.