The Joys of the Learning Curve

About five months ago I started learning how to play the banjo.  I had an old banjo from my middle school years when I was under the spell of a short infatuation with The Kingston Trio.  I took lessons for about 8 months until a more profound infatuation with high school athletics lured me away.  The poor banjo sat idle (or more accurately, hung idle, since it now adorns the wall of my music room!) for 50 plus years. 

I have been playing guitar off and on for much of my life and have acquired a modest level of competence – no Eric Clapton -  but I am capable of accompanying myself and others and performing short, mediocre solos.  I have always liked the sound of a banjo, so I decided to pick up my old banjo and use the rich lode of Internet lesson videos and websites to teach myself.

There is nothing quite like the first part of the learning curve.  When you start from zero, every advance is exhilarating!  If there is sincere and consistent effort, then there will shortly be a noticeable and pleasurable reward, no matter what one’s natural talent may be.  This acquisition of skill is terrifically exciting – like discovering a new world.  And at first it is quite consistent.  The more effort you put in, the more skill you acquire.  In many cases, it may even seem exponential in its growth because, of course, compared to a starting situation of no knowledge or capability at all, even small accomplishments loom large and excite the imagination.

But eventually the first plateau is reached, and the soaring first flight into the new world ends.  There will be more progress, but it will come in smaller, less exciting steps, and it will require longer periods of hard work where there is little visible improvement.  There will still be very tangible rewards, but not at the accelerated pace of that early, sublime encounter.

It is tempting in life to engage in many passionate embraces with new occupations, to become as the old saying goes, ‘a jack of all trades and master of none’.  There are so many interesting things in this world, and the urge to investigate new activities and develop new skills is hard to resist.

But it is also a good habit to develop some passions more completely, rather than simply fly from one to the next once the initial ardor is quenched.  There is deep satisfaction in having worked long and hard on a skill and slowly developing it over time.  However, there is no assurance that you will become a master.  In the modern online world, where we are confronted with incomparable examples of mastery in every possible category, it is easy to become dispirited and abandon a quest because we suspect we will never attain those levels of expertise. 

The 10,000 hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, implied that we can obtain mastery if we are willing to devote ourselves to a project.  But in recent years, this claim has been debunked as only part of the formula for mastery of a discipline.  And who has 10,000 hours anyway?  Few of us will become superstars in anything we attempt.  If our goal is to find fame or fortune, then we are likely on a quixotic journey. But the slow, steady progress that is the necessary result of any good faith effort in an activity is reward enough if we cast vanity aside.

As in most things in life, a balance of acquiring many new skills and committing more profoundly to a few is probably the best approach.   Still, I do love the first heady joys of the learning curve.  They seem to be in perfect synchrony with my somewhat restless spirit!