Getting Good

A friend of mine recently asked me what factors make someone really good at an activity. This is a question I have pondered about many times in the last several years. I find it interesting that my own answers have not always been the same. Not only has my motivation and approach to things changed, but also how I measure “good” is drastically different today than it was a few years ago. I think you need two things to get good at something. One, you have to be motivated to want to be good (easier said than done) and second, you need the discipline to stick to your plans.

Goal setting

Well, it must come as no surprise to anyone that you have to work hard to get good at something. But the abundance of platitudes do not really flesh out the details of what one has to do to get better at something. I owe a lot of my work ethic to my basketball captain, back when I was in India. He had an organized way of coaching the team, where he had a vision for where he wanted the team to be and pushed the team to get there, while meticulously recording the progress we made. Following that, it seemed very plausible to me that even an insurmountable goal can be achieved by making incremental progress in an organized manner.

OK, now to the specifics. I like to make S.M.A.R.T (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound)  goals. Initially, I was very dismissive of following silly acronyms. However, even if you don’t follow this rule to the letter, I think it has some very important core aspects that help make good goals. The most important of which is that it makes a goal well defined and hence achievable. It is important to get a feeling of satisfaction or accomplishment on completing a goal. It is very important to get familiar with this feeling. It is this sense of satisfaction that drives me to take on bigger challenges. It gives me the sense of confidence in my own ability and I have also come to respect myself more for it. In addition to that, this method helps distinguish between goals and wishes (for example, winning a contest is a wish and not a goal, since it may depend on external factors that are beyond my ability to influence).

Motivation

While the above method maps the path to achieving goals, this alone is insufficient! I realized a few years back that it is not always easy to muster the motivation to see your goals to completion. I suffer from crippling laziness just as much as the next person. I spend a lot of my free time watching TV or playing video games. In retrospect I definitely spend more of my free time being lazy than actually pursuing my goals. I realized through experience that I can make all the plans that I want, but it is impossible to find the drive to see all of them through. Even something simple can be gruelling in the long run. Presently, I pick my battles and am very decisive about the projects that I take on. Knowing myself better and being aware of what I can digest really helps me make more realistic goals.

It’s difficult to understand why we feel motivated to do the things that we do. When I was younger (about 7 years ago), my motivation to do things was primarily to be cool. I wanted to be acknowledged for my efforts and for my ideas to be validated.  I really craved the attention (I still do). While this seems petty in retrospect, I think it’s natural for someone to feel that way. But I digress, my point is that this was sufficient reason/motivation at that time. But over time, I grew weary of the need to be validated and it was an insufficient reason to do things anymore.  Presently, I find it motivating to see myself improve at the things that I do. I simply want to enjoy learning new skills, and see myself grow and become better. I observe this with bouldering, art and my research, where seeing myself get better is a strong reason to pursue these goals.

Staying motivated is tricky. I don’t think I can make myself feel motivated in the long term easily. Inspiration can get things rolling but it is hardly sufficient to keep me motivated for months or years. I feel completing small goals consistently is a prerequisite to taking on bigger challenges. You really need to get familiar with the feeling of satisfaction from completing goals, which forms the basis for what to expect from larger goals. Knowing this feeling helps me remain dedicated to the tasks at hand. Naturally, I cannot conjure this feeling, but rather only learn it from experience. It’s also a fine balance between picking something that isn't too easy (where it's not even a challenge and hence not satisfying) and picking something too large to manage (leading you to stall/quit). I’ve been maintaining a diary this year and I confess that even simple tasks like writing one sentence everyday is extremely difficult when I have to keep at it for a whole year or longer. 

I recently read “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***” by Mark Manson. Though I don’t usually find these types of books interesting (since they are full of anecdotes that are hard to draw conclusions from), he does make two very interesting points. First, he highlights : how you measure yourself is very important to being satisfied or dissatisfied with an outcome. Second, though not very clearly stated, an interpretation I make is that it is important to align your goals with your core values in life. 

Currently, my primary aim with my goals is not to get good at things but to do them consistently. In the last couple of years my planning has been such that I can do the required activity with minimal "initiation effort".

What is good?

What does "to be good at something" mean and good compared to what? For example, I know I am not going to get better than a professional boulderer who climbs for a living. At the same time, being better than a casual boulderer who goes climbing once a month is nothing to be proud of. So what exactly am I aiming for?

In “How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation” by Anne Helen Petersen, the author describes the hypocrisy of the present day situation where everything we do has become something we include in our resumes. It is no longer sufficient to enjoy playing an instrument, what’s important is that you played this instrument in front of an audience or passed an exam that declares a certain level of proficiency with this instrument.

I grew up in a competitive environment as a child (predominantly in terms of academics). I felt I was constantly judged as a person based on my academic performance and I judged others in the same way. Though I am disgusted by this today, it is hard for me to shake the feeling that everything is a competition. I see the hypocrisy now in evaluating others and myself in this one dimensional manner. It is something I am trying to work through. I feel I need this fundamental realignment to grow further. 

“Good” for me now is simply in relation to myself and being a better version of myself is really what I’m looking for. I have really come to enjoy it, especially in bouldering with my fellow bonobos. I find it cathartic to support everyone in their individual quest for improvement rather than compete with them for a meaningless high. 

Next steps

I can see that I haven’t said a single thing about how to actually get good at anything. Well, this is deliberate. I feel that I am in a phase in my life where it is difficult for me to really say what I want from the things that I do. I know that it makes me happy to do these things and to a large extent I worry about what will happen if I let my laziness get the better of me. I feel I will really regret it if I did not use the time and freedom that I now have to explore the opportunities available to me. I am still very competitive and I doubt that will change about me. But in my eyes I think that I am rather average (it's simply a matter of who/what you compare yourself to) and needless to say, I have a lot to improve upon.