How often were you thinking about trying out a new hobby or picking up an old one, but it seems like there is never really enough time to actually do it?
I love trying out new crafts and sports mostly just out of curiosity. In that way I got into all kinds of stuff sewing, knitting, piano & guitar playing, sailing, photography, rugby, pen-plotting, contributing to a local meet-up group and even blogging. I don't want to brag here, I am not good at any of those in particular. What I want to achieve is to learn the basic concepts and to pursue those further that I find exciting.
Sometimes when I shared my joy about exploring new things I got a frustrating response from colleagues, friends or family members: "I would like try that too, but I need to get a whole day to really get into it. Otherwise, it's not worth it."
This statement always made me sad, because with that view on life there will never be that time or at least not anytime soon. There is life happening around us and most of us just don't have the luxury of empty weekends or taking a day off.
So will that mean, that there is never time to do what you actually want to try out?
For me life is all about trying out new things and that's why I want to share with you three simple tips that work for me to get started.
Disclaimer here, this is post is not about starting a new hobbies and mastering them. For more information about that I kindly refer you to Angela Duckworth's TED Talk or her conversation on EconTalks with Ross Roberts. She found out that there is a relation of talent, effort and skill. With an initial talent we need less effort to learn a certain skill, but if we put a lot of effort into learning, talent can be outperformed. The motivation to go the extra mile and put effort into improvement she describes as grit, the combination of passion and perseverance, the will to push forward to become better.
In this blog post we don't want to get better, we want to get started. That means it's all about lowering the threshold and jump over the hurdles in own head that state reasons why we cannot do it.Learning is hard and learning under pressure is seldom resulting in a sustainable learning experience. Deadlines can be an external motivation to push yourself forward but with overloading you brain's capacity concepts won't stick.
Of course you can spend all this time on the one skill that you want to learn. How do you think this day will look like? And how do you think you would feel after that day?
Learning is a time and energy consuming process. It doesn't happen instantly and the body doesn't always appreciate novelty. To make motivation sustainable one way is to split sessions up into smaller bit and finish them before they feel draining.
Frustration and anger are good indicators that it's time for a break.
Personally I found my sweet spot to trick my brain in to workout or activities with intense focus between 15–20min. If I feel like going on longer, great! If not, I started and let the brain digest.
What is it that you want to be able to do or what is it that you want to achieve? Since you are starting learning a skill, goals should be small. If you start to learn football with the objective to become league player I admire your ambitions. However, do you know that you actually like running after a ball yet?
Small realistic goals in this case could be: I want to be able to kick the ball 5m in a certain direction. I want to be able to run 20m dribbling the ball.
The number of goals are not limited, you can set them and check them off. The goal shouldn't be impressive, it should be foremost motivating. Reaching this goal should leave you with a feeling of accomplishment.
Learning is the reward! No, just kidding. In the short run, the view is narrow, so think about what you want to do, if you spend a certain amount of time or energy on the skill that you want to learn. In the long run, learning is for sure the reward. You added a new tool into your toolbox and also learned how to learn.
How you choose the reward is up to you. Take a walk, watch a series, play some games, depending on what you find rewarding. I personally like candy.
You might have seen that the tips that I shared with you have a common theme. Start the first session with a low time and energy threshold and finish with a nice experience. With that positive memory it will be easier to start the next session another day. Once a routine is established we can talk about grit, challenges and pushing forward to develop skills further.
I hope you feel encouraged to try out a new skill or activity that you always wanted to try out.
Let me know how it goes! And please share your tips that you found valuable for learning.
All the best,
Christine