Why Is it So Hard to Learn New Things?
I don’t have an answer to that
But I do think it’s worth it to learn something new.
Daily blog #4
I’m not a fast learner. I’m a great learner, what I do learn I learn to a pretty solid degree, but I’m far from fast.
I learn concepts well, I’m bad at learning methodic things, I’m bad at remembering steps, it takes me a lot of attempts. I don’t learn well when I’m being watched. Everything about me as a learner has made me extremely good at what I’m naturally good at and subpar at what I’m not. I’ve spent the last 2 years putting more energy into things that I’m not naturally gifted at.
Even if I know I’m not going to be a 1 percenter at whatever it is that I suck at, I want to understand why I suck, what I’m not doing right, I don’t want to be afraid to fail.
And I think that’s the biggest issue with a lot of people, we’re afraid to fail, it’s human nature. Our brains are extremely efficient and that’s why our species has been able to thrive and drastically alter our environment like no other animal ever has. If something isn’t easy or goes outside of the patterns that we use for the sake of efficiency, we usually right it off as dumb or irrelevant.
I hate failing. I think this is the first time I’ve admitted that. But I don’t avoid failure and I think that’s something most people don’t understand about me. I do things I’m bad at, I actually spend more time doing things I’m bad at in public than I do doing things I’m actually good at. I’m a terrible natural speaker, but I spend most of my time talking. When I realized that I internalized how important it is to be in the learning zone rather than the comfort zone.
Learning is hard. Being bad in the beginning is hard. Being bad for longer than others sucks. Not everyone gets lucky and has natural talent in anything (I’m one of those people), but effort makes a difference. It’s not always a huge difference in terms of you vs others, but learning something new that you aren’t naturally inclined in makes a huge gap in terms of you vs yourself.
