Have you got really good at something you were once crap at? How?
November 29, 2014 7:28 AM   Subscribe

There are loads of things I'm crap at including driving tests, reading maps, i.t, maths and statistics, science and anatomy and handling conflict. Some of these would help me professionally and all are areas I'd like to improve in... or at the very least have an elementary grasp of to be better rounded or whatever.. Whilst I'm sure self talk/prior negative experiences/crap teachers and/or feedback/brain wiring (maybe...) keep me a bit stuck with these subjects.. at various points I have sat down semi seriously at least to try and tackle these knowledge deficits. Granted discipline ain't always my strongest trait.. but have you had any related success stories to overcoming a subject you were intimidated by/felt 'doomed' in(?!) I'd love to get your tips and insights.
posted by tanktop to Education (19 answers total) 36 users marked this as a favorite
 
It depends on your definition of "really good", but I have a technique for getting competent at something. I do this all the time now, but it took me 30 years to figure out how:

1. Do something.
2. Identify the shittiest part of what I did.
3. Make that part better.
4. Go to Step 2.

It's basically practice, but my brain always thought of practice as repetition, while I thing of this as iteration. That's probably my own comprehension quirk.

It takes discipline. More importantly, it takes the realization and understanding that you are going to perform shittily at the beginning, and that's ok. But if you keep iterating, it will get better. You may not become a virtuoso, but you can become competent.

I love Ira Glass's comments on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY

I also am loathe to post a Macklemore lyric, but I want to frame this one from "Ten Thousand Hours" and put it on the wall:

"The greats weren't great because at birth they could paint,
the greats were great because they paint a lot"

Hope this helps!
posted by AaRdVarK at 7:49 AM on November 29, 2014 [9 favorites]


Practice. I know it sound trite but that is how I did it. The hard part is you have to be present when you do out and work at it. In my case it was painting miniature figures. I have a standard I eat to get to, I'm not there yet but I try to paint some everyday, and while I'm not whee I want to be yet I am getting there. I pick one area to work on at a time and focus on that

Two tricks that help, make sure you have the right tools for the job, they may not be what every one else uses but the right tools are the ones that work for you and may take some experimenting to find.

Keep a record of your progress, I will often times line up figures to compare how I've improved over the past year, it is very motivational. Find a way to track your progress.

Also practice isn't just putting in time, you have to be present and have a goal. In my case say I want to improve painting highlights. I will paint a bunch of figures focusing on highlights, trying different methods, experimenting with it until I find what works for me then I paint highlights over and over.
posted by wwax at 7:59 AM on November 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


Well, when I first started playing guitar, like everyone who starts at something new, I was crap at it. But I made myself play every day, learn new songs, new techniques, etc. Ten years later, I'm a pretty competent guitar player. There was no "trick" to it; only regular and consistent practice, and working to expand my abilities.

Granted, that is more of a "knowledge-how" situation, and your question seems more focused on mastering "knowledge-that." Let me give you an example of my failing to learn something. For years I've tried to teach myself programming. I've tooled around with Ruby and Python for a bit, but it never stuck. The reason why is because I was trying to teach myself all this stuff, but I never really had a practical project or goal to apply the knowledge to. Outside of learning exercises and occasional experimenting, I wasn't really *doing* anything with the knowledge I was acquiring.

So, my recommendation is to find a practical application for the knowledge you want to acquire, and pursue that. It's a lot easier to learn to handle conflicts, for instance, if you're in the business of handling conflicts. It's a lot easier to learn statistics, if you're trying to achieve a goal that absolutely requires understanding statistics. I can totally understand wanting to know things for their own sake! I am myself kind of an information-addict. But in my experience, it's best to learn things incidentally, in the pursuit of whatever it is that you want to do.
posted by zchyrs at 8:00 AM on November 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


I started taking (math) classes this past January. Studying habits and discipline were an issue for me the first time I went to college and I got really bad grades and had to repeat a few classes (and still got bad grades). Taking a class takes care of the discipline part for me - the classes cost around $500 each and I don't like wasting money. Also it turns out I have a little bit of an ego WRT my grade point average. Also I took another class with a co-worker so there was a bit of competition which also helped with the discipline.

Being an adult (as opposed to a young college student), tackling subjects I wanted to learn, paying for it myself, taking a class (a form of publicly committing to the task) all really helped motivate me.

I've kind of maxed out at my current job. It has it's challenges but I already have all the skills I need to do it. I believe that taking the classes has been really good for my brain. I also think of it like a muscle - use it or lose it. The more I learn, the more I want to learn.

The success story part: for the first time I really understand the material. And I have 4.0 GPA. (Woot!)
posted by Beti at 8:01 AM on November 29, 2014


One thing to avoid is the 'mind trap' I've seen so often in people, where they have matter-of-factly bought into the belief that "I'm not good at math". Or "playing a musical instrument", etc. Starting out with that mindset is essentially guaranteeing that you're wasting your time.

I'm not trying to sell any snake oil here: just don't fall into the trap of thinking / believing that you can't do something.
posted by doctor tough love at 8:03 AM on November 29, 2014 [9 favorites]


For me I find that if I'm having trouble learning something, sometimes it helps to reframe how I'm going about learning it. As a concrete example, I always thought I was terrible at math, because I struggled with it endlessly in school. That all changed when I took my first college-level stats class and, despite the math being fairly advanced, thought it was a breeze. I realized I have a way easier time learning stuff when it's towards a concrete, useful end - so I had a hard time with calc because it didn't feel like it was doing anything other than turning some numbers in to other numbers, but the way that stats had real, concrete meaning I could map on to the real world made it easy. These days, I'm going back and learning all the math I struggled with - calc and linear algebra, mostly - as part of teaching myself data science and machine learning, and now that I can fit the math in to a framework where I'm doing something concrete and real with it I find I'm having a much easier time wrapping my head around it.

In short, if you're really having a hard time learning something, try taking a look at how you're going about learning it and see if you can shake that up.
posted by Itaxpica at 8:07 AM on November 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Step 1 for me is always to start with reminding myself, "Lots of people do this thing and do it well. So it can't be THAT difficult."

Then the next step is to read about how to do it (or watch youtube videos, or whatever). Even on how to handle conflict-- they write books about that for people like you who don't know how and want to get better at it.

Then do it over and over again, starting with an easy task and working your way up. Also allowing yourself that the first few efforts will be a waste. (I had to buy the equipment to replace a gasket on my toilet twice because the first time I did it wrong and bought the wrong parts).
posted by deanc at 8:46 AM on November 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


In short, if you're really having a hard time learning something, try taking a look at how you're going about learning it and see if you can shake that up.

This is really important to me as well. Sometimes when I'm really intimidated or frustrated I just stop and first do a survey of how the thing is taught to see all the available options and experiment with one or two with the understanding that it might not be the right tack, or might only be right for me for a little while.

The other thing I have to keep in mind is that these things aren't instant, and that "rest" time is actually part of the neurological process of forming the paths in the brain to do the thing. I taught myself to knit recently, and fought with the motions required to do simple stitches for a couple of hours, got mad, cried*, threw it down. And then the next day picked it up and did it badly but with a relatively good grasp on the movements.

It's just perfectionism, and you have to fight it on multiple fronts including being kind to yourself.

*Get mad and cry is apparently an unavoidable neurological phase for me. Pretty much every big leap in language/skill/understanding acquisition is preceded by a tantrum for me. At this point, I'm often already laughing at myself before I'm done stomping my feet and crying.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:53 AM on November 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm not trying to sell any snake oil here: just don't fall into the trap of thinking / believing that you can't do something.

QFT. I used to hate maths. In fact I used to say "Math hates me and thought I was very clever." This was complete rubbish of course - it just required a bit more effort than I was used to. I later got a job at a financial institution and I loved the fiddly numbers work.

And also what has been said before (and you know this)... practice, practice, practice. It's tedious, often frustrating, but it's the only thing that consistently works.
posted by ClarissaWAM at 8:57 AM on November 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


You can see if coursera has a course on something. It helps if there are deadlines and forums where you can discuss with other students.
posted by hz37 at 9:21 AM on November 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


I got into science by reading cheesy pop books about giant squids and stuff like that. I now have a PhD in Biology, so I just needed an entry really and to have my interest piqued. Maybe that could work for you - get your interest piqued through something sort of light in the subject area and then it'll make you want to delve more into it.
posted by Toddles at 10:33 AM on November 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


I was awful at physics in high school. I did not understand how or where the equations come from. Algebra did not come easy for me. But I loved to solve problems, and, coming from a lower socioeconomic background, I saw that an engineering degree can enable me access to middle class jobs. So I persevered and finished the engineering degree I started with. I got a 1 on the AP Physics exam, B's in physics in my freshman year of college, but graduated with honors and am now in graduate school in engineering.

How did I do it? Practice, dedication, and desire. If you want something bad enough, you will put the time and effort into attain it. I think that the fact that I don't like "losing out" and that I wanted to escape poverty added a lot of extrinsic motivation too. There is no easy way out, but, if you enjoy practicing that skill (whether it is physics or playing piano), it becomes "easier" in that it is more fun. Also, looking at other resources may help, since certain ways of instruction may better suit your individual learning style.
posted by wye naught at 11:55 AM on November 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


You haven't said whether you are a woman or not. I am, and the first thing I thought when I saw your list is that the societal stereotype of women is that we are supposedly bad at these things.

A strategy that works well for me is to seek out women-only environments for studying such things. Find a tutor or study partner who is a woman. If there is a Women in [Profession] group you're a member of, or a more general Women in STEM type group near you, maybe you could sit in on classes they offer, or start a study club for enhancing skills.
posted by Bentobox Humperdinck at 1:19 PM on November 29, 2014


For me it comes down to two things:

1. Practice
2. Work smarter not just harder
3. Confidence

In a lot of ways, I think the second point is most important. You can spend 5 hours going over the same textbook, but if you're not absorbing anything, than it's essentially wasted time.

If you're putting in a lot of dedicated practice and you're not getting anywhere then you really need to re-evaluate your methods. Maybe it's a clash of learning styles (I'm a visual learner who can learn by reading/writing but am terrible at listening) or maybe you do better with a teacher as opposed to self teaching. Maybe you need a different teacher or different books.

And since you ask for personal success stories:

I breezed through middle school/high school, and did quite well in undergrad despite the fact that I was always procrastinating and just generally kind of a mess. However, the only class I ever got below a B in was general chemistry. It may not seem like a big deal, but at the time, that C+ really crushed me, and after that, I convinced myself that I just couldn't do science. After all, I could put very, very little work in and still pretty much ace my humanities classes, but I couldn't get an A in that course even with the work I put in.

Fast forward to 5 years later, and I found myself facing gen chem again. I had to take it, because it's a necessary pre req for the grad school that I'm very committed to. While taking the class, I studied like I've never studied before, and I constantly adjusted my work habits. On a more psychological level, I told myself that thousands of people take these classes and do well in them each year, and if all those other people can do it, so can I.

Long story short: I aced the class, and now I work as a teaching assistant for the course.
posted by litera scripta manet at 3:14 PM on November 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


Advice derived as a former university tutor and current art person-in-making:

Practice is definitely a huge part of this process. Show up, put your time in, and after a while the experience alone puts you ahead of where you started. Picking up on patterns never hurts. Know your strengths and your weaknesses, shortcuts and detours.

Don’t be afraid to mess up. In fact, embrace it. And also embrace constructive criticism, or criticism that flags a flaw you hadn't seen or otherwise gives you a new perspective. Other stuff can fall away.

I’d like to say that asking questions is part of it, too. Not only in terms of the subject matter, but how you are understanding it and engaging with it. I agree that perhaps the delivery method may not match up, or it may depend upon what the end is to your learning. You may simply need to see a theory in practice. If you go over a concept and something doesn’t quite set with you, flag it and dig deeper when you can (if you can). There’s a reason for it. It’s not that you’ll never get it. It’s just that you haven’t gotten it yet.

Last but not least: really helps to relax. We often know or understand more than we think we do. Sometimes pressure gets in the way, or we overthink things. If someone came up to you in a relaxed setting and asked you your opinion on a subject you tried to learn but hadn't mastered, you'd probably still have a decent amount to say or at least be able to chime in at parts of the conversation. It's okay to talk about the difficulties, too. Often, that helps.
posted by artful at 11:35 PM on November 29, 2014


I once listened to an audiobook written by a Zen Buddhist Master called "The Science of Enlightenment". He is an American who grew up with western values, but became a buddhist monk and travelled to asia etc. I don't really recommend the book since it's not really focused enough and is way too long, but in one section, the master talks about how he was always really terrible in math and after years of being a monk he decided as an experiment to see if he could ever really get good at it. His discovery was that he absolutely could and that the idea that he was bad at it in the first place was more about a subtle mental block in attitude towards math than it had to do with actual ability in the subject.

So in essence, this is a tricky question you are asking. First how "good" and "bad" are completely subjective as well as dependent on comparisons. And yet the further you fall into the trap of comparisons the longer it's going to take you to learn anything because instead of putting 100% of the focus on practice, you are putting some of your mental energy towards the comparitive process in the background.

The Zen Master not only ended up doing well in the subject, but he actually ended up getting a higher education degree in mathematics. The meditative process of being completely present with your task helps a great deal.

A thought that helps me often when I get discouraged:

"You have a right to do the work, but you have no rights at all to the fruits of that work."

"god" says this to Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita. In other words, only worry about doing the work. Don't put any thought into the results... Just think- I'm going to practice for 30 minutes today. And make your ONLY goal practicing for 30 minutes. Don't worry about whether you end up "better" or not after practicing. The results of your actions are not yours, but rather belongs to "god" or "the laws of nature" or "universe"- whatever... but they're not yours. All you have any say over is the actual work you put into it. This thought is extremely liberating because when you realize this fact it takes all the pressure off of you and allows you to just practice in peace. Relaxing will help you absorb information more easily.

Another thought that helps me is that about past lives and the next life. If your beliefs are vehemently against the idea of reincarnation, then this may not help you, but I would say give it a shot: Many people believe that when a person has a "natural" talent for something- it's not because they were born lucky, but because they put forth the work into that talent in a previous life. Mozart achieved his level of musical genius not due to luck, but rather because he spent the last 5 lifetimes or so, studying music- so he was born with a natural ability to learn it quickly and well. What the mind doesn't remember- the soul always does. Everyone who has talent has WORKED on it in previous lives where they originally sucked at it. If you spend 20 years not speaking a language, you forget it all, but then you go back to your country of origin and are forced to speak it and within a couple of weeks you find that suddenly - like magic- it's all "re-learned" and comes back to you. If you take this attitude it will help you a lot because you'll know it's never too late to learn something. If you're 80 years old and you take up the violin it won't be a "waste" just because you can't ever be good enough at that age. Your soul will take the knowledge with it to the next life. Take this attitude and you will never worry about the pressure of "running out of time" or "being too late" to learn something.


I realize that these are mostly eastern zen-like beliefs and may not be your cup of tea, but beliefs affect one's attitude and that plays a stronger role in people's daily lives and their learning ability than they realize.
posted by rancher at 6:04 AM on November 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Ok, weirdly, for me, I don't learn things very well by 'doing'.
The first step in going from 'crap', almost never involves practice. Going from ok to GOOD takes practice, but that first step almost always seems to be observation, and thought.

If I suck at something, I need to stop trying to 'Do' (badly), and start watching and thinking. I can be shown how to do a judo throw over, and over, and over again, and I'll appear to get it, but I'll have forgotten it by the next week. For me, body memory doesn't sink in unless I understand it first.

Examples: Hula Hooping
As a child, and as an adult, if I tried hula hooping, it just fell on the ground. I didn't get it. I picked it up, it fell down. Gravity is a harsh mistress.
Then I watched a hooping video on repeat. It wasn't a tutorial, it was bad quality, but I liked the music - and was fascinated by the hooper. Go figure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta1O_FBiJGE
Next time I picked up a hula hoop (some time later), not only did I manage to actually keep the hoop in the air, but in quick succession, I was able to figure out some of the tricks she was doing, such as bending over and hooping vertically, hooping round the knees, spinning round etc.

Examples: Drawing
I have evidence of this, because I kept my sketches. I sometimes pull it out and show friends, kind of as evidence of the way my brain works.
Was at a cafe with some friends when one friend got us all to practice sketching, as they were doing a course on it. I tried drawing an outline of a bottle. It was pathetically bad, childishly bad, just an outline with really wobbly sides, just like every other time I'd tried to draw (or take art classes in highschool).
But, that was the point I decided I did want to LEARN to draw.
I kept 'meaning' to do a drawing course, and kept an eye out for them, but I also just took more of an interest in drawings, trying to figure out how they'd done it. I thought about how you can use a filter in Photoshop etc that will try and make a picture look like it is 'drawn', and how a photocopier works. I was drawing a childs idea of a face, and not how it actually LOOKED, which is all just light and dark/shadow. Eyes and lips and noses aren't outlines, but areas of light an dark.
Almost a year later, I picked up a sketchbook at a dollar store, and tried drawing a bottle of sauce on a table. I could draw. I immediately also copied a male torso from a newspaper. I could DRAW!
I got better over the next few months of practice, but my improvement was less than my initial improvement I had, with no drawing whatsoever. A large part of it was mental, but, clearly my hand-eye coordination had also improved, so, I think that was some kind of weird thing where I'd just told my brain that this was something I'd like to be able to do, and neurons had been firing and connecting in the background.

Example: Judo
I never really got Judo, because I'd see it, then I'd do it, but I wouldn't remember it. Only throw I can really do in a pinch, is because someone took me through exact body positioning, in words, at every point in the throw.
I had to know foot positions (e.g. moving right foot to be the point of an equidistant triangle from their feet), to where my knees, hips, arms, head were, at *every* point in the throw. I need those foot position things like for dancing.
If I don't have it completely understood and remembered in my head, I won't remember it, and I can't use it.
For that one throw though, I could pull it out and use it competently.
I have figured out though, that after several years of doing Judo, there is no point me going back to it unless I have found a book or video which will break down each move to learn, in that level of detail, because I just won't improve otherwise (please message me if you have recommendations!).
posted by Elysum at 5:56 PM on November 30, 2014


Cooking...

First thing I had to do was want to do it. I could barely cook mac and cheese 4 years ago. Then I got motivated and started to learn to cook. I started with food I liked (in fact, exclusively do this - there are rewards for doing a good job - a good meal).

Every time I make something I try to identify stuff that's wrong with it. Is it overcooked, too seasoned, etc, etc... Then I pay attention to the thing that wasn't to my satisfaction last time.

Youtube is awesome for learning things that have a visual or timing element to them. Not only can I watch someone make something I want to try, I can look at their end result and see if it's too my satisfaction (hash browns is an example of this - I went through 10 videos before I found someone that made them like I want to make them). Then before each 'practice' I try to visualize the thing I want to improve on.

I'm not a master cook or anything, but there are a bunch of dishes that are pretty complicated that I make really really well (better than any local restaurant).

Motivation. Self-critique. Visualization. Learning from example. Persistence (iterations).
posted by el io at 10:28 PM on November 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Running. I thought I was just not athletic, and that was a genetic thing I couldn't change, but I was wrong.

I was a fat kid, and a morbidly obese adult. In 2010, I made a New Year resolution to start exercising every day and to eat better. I started walking, and after a few months and losing 80 pounds I started running. It was hard at first, I could only run a few yards, but I gradually increased my distance, and in June I was able to run a full mile. I ran a half marathon in October, and have been running ever since. My half PR is 1:43, and my marathon PR is 3:59, which are both pretty good.

The key is to do the thing EVERY DAY, even just for a half hour. After 6 months you will be pretty competent, and you will continue to get better from there. Commit to every day for 6 months.
posted by I am the Walrus at 11:00 AM on December 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


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