Comment by josephg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josephg | Hacker News Reader

After a terrible breakup years ago I took a trapeze class. Before we got up on the trapeze bar, I spent most of the class telling everyone how bad I was going to be at it. When I got home I lay in bed confused. Why did I do that? This article is spot on. I was afraid of being seen to be bad at something.

Have you noticed? We spend almost our entire adult lives doing things we’re good at. Anything we do that we’re bad at, we either stop doing or we get good at it. So all roads lead us away from the experience of being a beginner. For me, it had been too long. And I’d accidentally forgotten how to do it.

So I took up dancing (which I’m bad at). That was really terrifying. And trampolining. And more recently improv. At the moment I’m learning to draw - which I spent most of my life wanting to do. But I never stuck with it because I hate drawing badly. But that’s just what it feels like to be a beginner. The trick is letting that go, because it doesn’t matter. You don’t get to be good at anything without first being bad at it. And being comfortably, visibly bad at something gives everyone else permission to play.

> For me, it had been too long.

I have a 5 year old and a 2.5 year old, and hang out with lots of small children. Fear of looking stupid as a beginner is something that most people have right from the start: I have watched kids be afraid of incompetence (to the point of not wanting to try) at riding a bike, running, swinging across monkey bars, drawing, singing, reading, learning a new language, ...

Similar situation here. One of the things I found useful for skill-based activities is to take video. I took my kid's swim lesson from 3-6, the improvement is obviously drastic. Now, my oldest is starting to understand that while she's not good at something right now, she just need more practice. It's a huge mental change for her.

This might be culturally dependent, as in some cultures there is much more emphesize on competition than in others. Have you reflected on your behaviour towards your children with respect to this?

I think there is a significant (inherent or deeply ingrained) personality component to people’s initial outlook. E.g. there was a pair of fraternal twins who we used to play with at the playground, and one of the pair was much more willing to try things while the other was much more afraid of being judged. More generally I have regularly seen substantial differences between siblings despite a lack of obvious differential treatment from their parents or any change of cultural values/norms.

Kids of 2–4 years old seem to have similar range of behaviors across substantially different cultural groups, e.g. comparing kids raised by tolerant non-confrontational hippies vs. strict immigrant professionals.

I imagine that learning to be comfortable as a beginner is something that can be trained / practiced. Some people certainly improve at it as they get older.

> Fear of looking stupid as a beginner is something that most people have right from the start

I'm a parent of a 5yo and surprised this is your experience. If anything, I'd say child behavior is the perfect anti-example of fear of trying new things.

Take one of the examples you provide: language. Young children ages don't care about using incorrect grammar or using the wrong words. This is why they're so good at progressing so quickly. Kids are way less afraid of failure than adults.

I also wouldn't be surprised if there's a significant environmental impact to children's behavior as well; in most ways, they're blank canvases when it comes to skill-based behavior. Personality...not so much.

Kids don’t mind listening to someone speaking a new language or reading them a story they can’t understand, and they don’t mind trying to communicate, but if you put them on the spot by asking them to do some kind of formal lesson, they freak out just like anyone else.

The most important thing I have found when trying to teach kids [and probably most other people too] is (1) break tasks into very small steps, (2) make the lesson as low-pressure and fun as possible.

I view performance anxiety and fear of looking stupid as a beginner as completely separate things.

When you put the average adult learning a new language in a foreign country, they'll pause before new words, think before conjugating a verb, etc. Kids don't do that; they just talk. They don't worry about making a mistake, but adults (on average!) do.

> performance anxiety and fear of looking stupid as a beginner as completely separate things

The same kid will happily try riding a bike if you just leave one sitting around where they can find it, but will balk if you ask them to try in front of their friends who already know how. I think a huge part (the majority) of people’s fear of learning new skills is a kind of performance anxiety. Both fear of looking bad in front of others, and to some extent fear of looking bad to themselves. The other significant problem is an inability to break the new skill down into small enough pieces to manageably tackle independently.

Speaking a language is always and inevitably a performance. But kids are typically given much more time and space to just listen without trying to speak, and are judged less when they do try. Some kids who move to a new country will just quietly listen for months before ever trying to say something in the new language; adults rarely have that luxury.

But in any event, there are plenty of adults who are willing to try speaking foreign languages imperfectly, and studies have shown children and adults have comparable ability to learn a second language (indeed adults often improve faster at the start).

Actually data shows that adults are way better at learning languages than children. Children just have 100s of hours of doing nothing besides learning languages so they succeed faster in calendar time. If you spent all day every day learning a language you’d be way faster at it than your kids.

There is a pretty well known speaker who wrote about his first public speech. He was to record himself, and it would listened to by some 5,000 people. He spent hours and hours re-recording himself, until a older friend stopped by and laughed at him, as follows:

"You are being nervous because you think that you might not be perfect, and doubt creates a feeling of nervousness and unsurety.

Well, I can dispel the doubt. You won't be perfect. In fact, you will be pretty lousy, because it is your first time, and it it is in front of a relatively large crowd.

So two pieces of good news. You needn't be nervous. And its not so bad that it will go lousy. Because everyone knows it is your first time, anyway, and they are expecting you to mess up. And this way, in the future, you will actually be great!"

A lot of wisdom there, IMHO

I am starting to teach at my local University and this was just the thing I needed to read. Thanks a lot Sam.

Exactly! We should practice being a beginner for our entire lives. It's a constant reminder to have that beginner mindset even where you think you are an expert.

I took up Jiu-Jitsu at age 40. Talk about humbling. I also catch myself occasionally doing what you did and mention how terrible I am/will be as a defensive mechanism.

But, the more comfortable I got at being a beginner led to even faster learning. This attitude has spread through other parts of my life, even areas where I'm not a beginner, and has led to improvement across the board.

> But, the more comfortable I got at being a beginner led to even faster learning. This attitude has spread through other parts of my life, even areas where I'm not a beginner, and has led to improvement across the board.

I think there's a ton of wisdom in this. You learn to learn by, surprise surprise, being a beginner at something. Exposing yourself to broad areas in which you're a total newb can teach patience (I've yet to learn basic carpentry because I am one of those people who hasn't got the patience to measure twice), too.

This is really insightful: being a beginner is going to teach you how to learn things, and that's a hugely transferable skill. (Besides, it's also really enjoyable.)

Martial arts are a hobby where I think this happens often. You could practice your whole life, but then you change disciplines or face a new teacher and suddenly you're doing everything wrong.

As the great Shug Emery[1] says, "You only get to be new at something once, so enjoy it!"

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/user/shugemery

Can you tell me more about how you are learning to draw?

I don't know, I generally like being bad at things. Not because of the state of being bad itself, but because if I'm not doing something new, it's boring, and to be doing something new is to be doing something you're bad at. So I'm basically trying stuff and asking everyone for help all the time. I don't care what others think of me, I like learning.

I don't even think they think I'm stupid, I'm sure they appreciate the fact that I've made every mistake before when they come to me for help later. I enjoy doing stuff more than I enjoy looking like an expert.

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