The joy of being a beginner

How experience sometimes takes delight away

Tim Wu wrote a thought-provoking essay titled “The Power of Mediocrity” where he made the case that the pursuit of excellence has infiltrated and corrupted the world of leisure. An alarming number of people don’t have hobbies. Wu reckons that’s because we’re afraid of being bad at them. Or rather, we are intimidated by the expectation that we must actually be skilled at what we do in our free time. Our “hobbies” have become too serious, too demanding, too much an occasion to become anxious about whether you are really the person you claim to be.

He adds, “If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you’re training for the next marathon. If you’re a painter, you are no longer passing a pleasant afternoon, just you, your watercolors and your water lilies; you are trying to land a gallery show or at least garner a respectable social media following. When your identity is linked to your hobby — you’re a yogi, a surfer, a rock climber — you’d better be good at it, or else who are you?”

This pursuit of excellence has many downsides, including, but not limited to, the lack of hobbies among people and the widespread corruption of leisure. Most tragically, it saps us of the joy of the first brush with experimentation. Being a beginner can feel like being on an exciting first date. You don’t really know where things will go, but you are excited to find out. For that date to go well, you need to laugh, enjoy the pursuit, and be okay with making a fool of yourself.

Now imagine if you went to that date thinking about metrics, performance, and, achievement. How do you think it would go?

Unfortunately, that’s what happens to most learners these days. Even before they embark on the journey to figure something out, they suck the joy out of the process. We live at a time where the importance of learning new things is talked about relentlessly but no one explains how to celebrate the learners/beginners mindset. That’s how learning often becomes so much about future goals, not present fulfillment.

I recently played golf for the first time. I had barely slept, and myy friends would have understood if I had canceled. Thankfully, I showed up…

I wish I could have told you that I was so good on my first day that my friends marveled at my skills. That didn’t happen. I was just like any other golfer on his first day…Perhaps marginally better but leaning into the “Day 1” mindset with no expectations of perseverance or performance unleashed a form of adventure I can’t quite describe.

One reason I could be relaxed about golf is that my identity isn’t attached to it. However, even if it were, the beginner’s mindset would be a treasured asset. The freedom to experiment (essential for learning anything) and the demands of performance don’t mix well. Forcing them upfront is probably best avoided.