Willing to be Bad

It’s easy to think that learning new skills is about determination and willpower. Some people have it, and some people don’t.

While that is true, it is also incomplete.

Learning a new skill is a commitment to consistently spend time doing something poorly, and to refuse to give up despite how hard that feels.

In this way, it is as much about being willing to spend time in discomfort—physical or psychological—with little to show for your efforts, potentially for long periods of time.

The thing I’m currently bad at is the guitar.

I’ve been bad at it for about a year and a half now. Before being bad at it, I was nothing at it, and so bad is a big improvement.

In the beginning, my fingertips constantly hurt from pressing on steel strings—so in addition to not being able to play much of anything, I was in pain. Plus, nearly every note I played buzzed. That alone was a good reason to stop.

Then I learned a few chords, and quickly discovered that many of the most “basic” ones, including the F chord, were bar chords, requiring pressing down HARD on multiple strings with one finger. That was nearly impossible for me, a true beginner, and I couldn’t do it properly until about two months ago. So, 15 months of not being able to play a C-F-G-C sequence, which is about as basic a chord progression as exists. That was another good reason to stop.

Now I can play some songs, but playing a chord shift with a bar chord—G-major to B-flat minor, for example—is a 50/50 proposition at best. So, I’m practicing it. How? By repeating G-major—B-flat-minor hundreds of times. On a given night, I might play that 100 times terribly, and another 100 times less terribly. I’m not playing most of the song I’m working on (Summer of 69, randomly), I’m just playing those two chords for the better part of a practice session. By the end, it’s a little better, and I’m a little bit encouraged. And then the next day, it feels like I’m back where I started. And that’s frustrating too, and another good reason to stop.

The temptation to stop, you see, that is really the hard bit.

You have this idea in your head about what “good” will look like, and you’re so clearly far away from that ideal, that it can seem hopeless, and you can think, “Maybe this isn’t a good plan after all. Maybe I’ll never get there. Maybe I should stick to the things I already do well.”

The thing I notice, when I get back to the G-major to B-flat, is that it takes me fewer tries today to get to decent than it took me yesterday. I also notice that, after working on that transition, my (formerly) dreaded F-chord feels almost easy. Noticing the progress I’ve made, however small, is much more motivating than dwelling on the gap between me and everyone who plays the guitar so effortlessly.

So I dive in again.

Going towards the frustration.

Feeling that vulnerability.

Progressing much more slowly than I’d like.

But smiling at the voice saying “this isn’t all that fun, and it doesn’t sound that good. Maybe I’ll never get there” and just doing it again.

I’m talking about guitar but you can see that the discomfort is the same across disciplines: G-to B-flat could be learning how to integrate AI into your work, or keeping at running every day even though it’s never easy, or eating differently, or learning a new language, or deciding to take on virtually anything at all that you’re not great at today.

It’s not all that bad to be bad at something.

At least you’re doing the something.

And whatever you do, with intention and effort, for a long time, you improve at.

No matter what.