In Praise of Being Bad at Things

Somewhere in your home there is probably a guitar with dusty strings, a pair of running shoes worn twice, or a half-finished painting. You took up something, you were bad at it, and you quietly stopped. Almost everybody has one of these. The question is why we treat it as a failure.

The problem with being an adult

Children are excellent at hobbies because they expect to be bad at things. A nine-year-old who cannot swim is simply a nine-year-old learning to swim. An adult who cannot swim often feels embarrassed about it — and embarrassment is the fastest way to stop.

Adults also compare too much. We start learning something and immediately look at people who have been doing it for fifteen years. That comparison is not useful. It is like judging your first week of English against a native speaker.

How long it actually takes

The good news is that the hardest part is short. The author Josh Kaufman argues that around 20 hours of focused practice is enough to get reasonably good at most new skills — not expert, but good enough to enjoy it. Twenty hours is forty minutes a day for a month.

Most people never reach hour twenty. They quit somewhere around hour three, which is the exact point where everything still feels awkward and nothing sounds right yet.

Why hobbies are worth the effort

A good hobby does something a job usually cannot: it gives you a task that is challenging but possible. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called this state "flow" — the feeling of being so absorbed in an activity that you forget the time.

Flow needs two things. The activity must be difficult enough to hold your attention, and easy enough that you do not give up. That is why hobbies feel rewarding in a way that scrolling on a phone never does.

You do not need to be good at something for it to be good for you.

How to talk about it

English has two patterns for this, and choosing between them is one of the trickiest parts of B1. Some verbs are followed by a gerund (-ing): "I enjoy painting", "I don't mind waiting", "I gave up smoking". Others are followed by an infinitive: "I want to learn", "I decided to join", "I hope to improve".

A few work with both and change meaning. "I stopped running" means you gave it up. "I stopped to run" means you stopped doing something else in order to run. Small difference, very different weekend.

Give it a go

So choose something you are keen on but have never tried. Tell one person you are doing it, because that makes it harder to quietly stop. Accept that the first three hours will be uncomfortable.

And remember: nobody is watching your first attempt as closely as you are. Give it a go.