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How You Know a New Skill Is Worth Learning
Is a skill worth pursuing if you know you’re never going to be amazing at it?
A friend recently came to me with this question, and at the time I gave the generic answer: As long as it makes you happy. Do what you like, don’t do what you don’t like; a binary way of dismissing the vicissitudes of life.
Obviously things aren’t that simple. Even for me, the happiness I derive from some skills comes precisely from the feeling that I’m getting better at them. For example, I love singing, and I have fun every time I sing. However, nothing beats that uplifting feeling of nailing a tricky riff, or hitting a note I was never able to hit before.
So if getting better at a skill is what makes you happy, but at the same time you know you’ll never be awesome, then is it still worth pursuing?
An unfair comparison
The biggest obstacle to feeling happy when learning a skill is when our motivation gets shattered because we compare ourselves to others.
It happens to me all the time.
I spend hours thinking up and writing articles for a tiny but lovely audience, just to then get a notification for an article trending worldwide and obsess over “Why couldn’t that be me?” Much younger writers are capable of articulating the points…
