The Leaps You Make As A Beginner
Learning new things is always a daunting endeavour. In the beginning you don’t even know what is good advice and what isn’t. Which resources to trust and which ones to run from. The lack of mental models makes every lesson that much harder to learn. Overall, it feels clunky.
When I started this blog I got 2 views per post, now I get 10. It’s a five times multiplier from when I started. I have to get the to 50 views per post to have the same multiplier and after that I have to get to 250. Meanwhile, the same amount of views seems to become less and less relevant stats. What was a multiplier at 10 views, it will become an addition in the road to 50 views and will go unnoticeable on the road to 250.
Before even getting to these tangible two views, there is theory that I had to learn. Basics things like the structure of a blog post or writing like you speak or more advanced ones like “Who am I writing for?”.
Once you get the basics right and you are used to the mechanics and inner workings, the value you extract from theory will diminish abruptly. To keep growing you have to apply all that knowledge in a practical way and even that will only get you so far. A time for retrospection and to review one’s work and make a plan to move forward is the final step. The slow grind that is the refinement process on the way to mastery. This last step will lead right back to the beginning at the theory step successfully closing the feedback loop of the learning process.
This process can be applied to any skills, like KettleBells which is another topic I write about. At first, you have to go through ten sessions with a personal trainer to learn the basics mechanics like the proper breathing technique or how to properly execute the hip hinge. The next step is to participate in a class with a trainer supervising and correcting your mistakes. Once the basics have set in, you can do a training session alone in front of a mirror and start correcting yourself. The last step is to pick up some books, learn how to plan your own training sessions.
Notice how the more you progress toward mastery the less it becomes about the initial goal and the more it becomes about the skill itself. If the initial goal was to be more active and improve your health, you can stop there and call it the day.
The reason I write on this blog is to learn how to express myself better in writing. And to make it public so that I have to think twice about my ideas. This purpose is fairly easy to achieve but will only get me so far in terms of numbers of views and that’s okay. It might even be the cases that going after a certain number doesn’t have anything to do with better writing anymore.
Do not rush the process. It is easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself with someone who is just a few lessons ahead of you and just wanting to get there. If you are that much better, go through the steps faster but don’t skip them just because you think you deserve to be much further ahead. Sooner or later you will have to come back for pick up those little nuggets of knowledge that you overlooked.
Start now, advance one lesson at a time. Embrace clunkiness. There will never be an easier, more rewarding time than at the beginning anyway.