Personally, I experienced this with programming. When I learned to program in high school, it never struck me as a chore; it was always just interesting and I enjoyed it.
However, I think the only reason I was able to enjoy learning programming was because of how adept I already was with computers as a "power user", because it gave me the physical skills and conceptual underpinnings required to appreciate the field.
To me, this raises an important question.
If you lack the physical skills or are a novice in a field, it can be frustrating or intimidating to learn even if you would otherwise enjoy being competent. For example, learning to draw: should one accept their dislike of basic beginning drawing practice to imply that drawing is not an appropriate vocation for them? Difficult question; probably depends on the person. The only way to know if you love drawing at a competent level is to reach that level. In a sense it begs the question: how can you tell if you will enjoy doing something until you have the ability to actually do it?
I don't think there is an easy way to solve this problem; you simply have to put the effort into practicing new things even if you don't enjoy the practice. That's where you get into willpower, commitment, etc. My experience of the world is that you simply cannot expect to be successful by only doing things that don't feel like work; sometimes, you have to actually do the work.
Ira Glass has some advice on the issue of when you start something you enjoy, but your skill doesn't match your taste. Push through and keep practicing until your skill matches your taste.
I don't think the problem is things you enjoy but don't have skill to match your taste, the issue is identifying things you would enjoy if you had more skill, so you know where it is worth investing the effort to get over the lack of current skill.
I'd argue that sometimes you don't really know what good taste is or whether or not you would enjoy something until you've acquired a certain level of competency for it. Sports, programming and math are all like this. The more you work on them the more enjoyable they become, and you'd become a lot more "tasteful".
Programming, maths & science, etc. are acquired tastes. Not things you can enjoy from the get-go. I think many friends and family of mine would make far better programmers than I, or great scientists, but they've never had the need to venture out of their comfort zone to try something new. The age of constant distractions and an easy lifestyle is not conducive to breaking out of the norm.
The things I enjoy most took me years of studying.
> Programming, maths & science, etc. are acquired tastes. Not things you can enjoy from the get-go.
I dunno, I enjoyed all three from the get-go. Ballroom dance I suspected I would enjoy, but it took me a while to get to the point where it wasn't just work to do it (even though I enjoyed watching it.)
I know plenty of people for whom those things are flipped. I don't think "what you can enjoy from the get-go" and "what takes more time to learn you can enjoy" is constant from person to person.
In my case, I didn't expect to enjoy learning Paraguayan traditional dancing, but it sure was fun and I'm glad I tried it. Like another poster pointed out, it's the hard work that comes first (overcoming the fear, or plugging away at the books), then comes the satisfaction. I think it must feel lonely being a great mathematician for example, knowing that everyone else has settled for less, and that only you and a few others have even a slight understanding of the universe.
Math is mostly about communication with other people.
Only recently have computer proofs become somewhat accepted. The holy grail is still to find simple proofs to interesting problems to enlighten people.
Thats a good point. I suppose you could use your taste as a guide to what you may be good at. But, like you said, there is that gap between investing the time and discovering if you are skilled at it.
I took on three new hobbies a couple of years ago. All of them had seemed interesting to me for ages, but I'd never made the time to explore them. Once I actually started, it was exhilarating. Practice was long and slow, but never boring. I'd spend hours at it and not even notice the time go by as I worked at a particular technique (especially with classical guitar). Things only got irksome if I indulged in comparing my new skill to my skill level in programming, despairing at the difference, or if an injury prevented me from doing it for awhile. But after a couple of years of daily practice, I've finally reached a level of competence in two of them (there just wasn't enough time for three) where I can feel satisfaction in my output, and am even willing to show other people.
My early education in programming followed a similar pattern, actually. I'd actively pick the brains of any teacher in high school who gave off even a hint of understanding programming or anything related. Once I'd learned everything about digital logic and did all I could on the broken Heathkit boards, my electronics teacher bought a computer for the electronics shop and let me take over his office just to get me to stop bothering him. I also resurrected a 2400 baud modem and hooked it into his local phone line. Actually, I didn't tell him about that, or the fact that I was hacking into the local university to have a poke around gopher space :P. I got some Motorola manuals, and wrote a book on assembly language programming, which I handed in at the end of the year instead of doing the regular assignments & exams.
There are many things to be passionate about. It's just a matter of identifying which ones resonate with you, and making the time.
I don't always agree with Mark Cuban, but I think he makes a good point on this when he talks about the folly in the adage, "follow your passions." His point is that you should follow your efforts as that leads you to be better at something, which in turn grows your passions in it. You can read his words for yourself: http://blogmaverick.com/2012/03/18/dont-follow-your-passion-....
Even if you do not have any 'passion' for a field, I think it is important to have some kind of strong intrinsic motivation; to help people, to further Humanity's knowledge, or whatever else. Practice for the sake of practice is incredibly hard to maintain.
> you simply have to put the effort into practicing new things even if you don't enjoy the practice. That's where you get into willpower, commitment, etc. My experience of the world is that you simply cannot expect to be successful by only doing things that don't feel like work; sometimes, you have to actually do the work.
This is 100% spot on. I came to programming in middle school with not much more than average knowledge of using a computer. I could fix the family's wifi, but had never touched a command line. So I had to learn all the underpinnings of a computer at the same time. I enjoyed both immensely, but at times it was tedious, and I had to push through that to get to the parts that I now really enjoy.
I know a lot of people that have quit, deciding coding wasn't for them, when they hit those tedious bits of understanding a file system and command line.
It's just like getting through the phase of learning an instrument where you have to struggle to remember chords and where notes are and build muscle memory. I don't think most musicians enjoy that part, they enjoy the creativity that comes after it.
> The only way to know if you love drawing at a competent level is to reach that level. In a sense it begs the question: how can you tell if you will enjoy doing something until you have the ability to actually do it?
I have had such a realisation few years back, which I neither was able to put into concrete words, nor did I take it seriously, until I have read yours.
Growing up, I used to love drawing as a child, but later I started to become indifferent towards it and my skill started waning leading me to wonder if I simply disliked it or was just not so good at it. Unbeknownst to me I started practicing in hopes of becoming good enough at it to be able to do better programmer art work for my games. I became reasonably good at it and only then was I able to reason out that my indifference was because programming interested and intrigued me far more than drawing ever had.
> Personally, I experienced this with programming. When I learned to program in high school, it never struck me as a chore; it was always just interesting and I enjoyed it.
that was me when I picked up my first K&R book in elementary school. It was interesting and fun.
FYI the 'it can be learned because I have the requisite context' zone is well discussed in formal education circles. Curiosity and self-confidence: that's harder to teach, harder to maintain, harder to quantify.
This is a great point. These things are never black and white. I suppose you could argue that the pain of developing a new skill could be enjoyable to you and this is how you identify things that don't feel like work. I generally find this to be true (to a degree) for things i truly enjoy and/or have accumulated the most ability in.
I'm a programmer and I completely agree. When everything was new it was fun and exciting. I started programming seriously when I was 12 years old. By the time I was in college programming was an absolute chore.
Yet I do it for a living, because building things is incredibly satisfying. Ya about 90% of the time I'm kind of bored, but actually finishing things (useful things!) makes it all worth it.
Interestingly I found that I have the same feeling in other endeavors. When I remodeled my house I found construction to be just incredibly dull. But man, the result was absolutely worth it. I don't know if I've ever felt more satisfied with anything.
Everything new is interesting to me, that's the problem. I like building things too. So I'll think I need to make a go of being a programmer. Then two weeks later I'll doubt that and think, maybe I should be a builder / real estate developer? Pretty much everything interests me when it's new and challenging, but I'm not interested in being a master of anything.
thats a powerful talent to have; although there is the danger it can lead you down the wrong path
personally, if I find something dull for a longer amount of time, there is no way I could push through it; luckily, in programming, if something is dull, you either don't have the creative freedom you need, or you have chosen the wrong abstractions (which leads to the fun task of looking for better ones :-))
It probably depends on the type of programming and the challenge it presents.
A typical month, for me, has probably 5% exciting programming work. The rest is just tedious churn that you inevitably have to do to support the exciting bit.
Maybe you just need to work on something you actually care about. There are a lot of hard and interesting problems which need programmers working on them, but boredom is understandable if you are just churning out the one-million-and-oneth generic web app.
In addition to topical interest, this is exactly how I feel when I don't own something and don't have responsibilities.
At my last job, I was brought on into a role of leadership and immediately had all of it usurped by my boss (formerly doing my responsibilities) upon my first couple of this-is-unexplored-territory-so-I-stepped-on-a-rake mistakes. Looking back, I was checked out by April (and I started in February).
"Checking out" for me is hard to see until I'm not checked-out anymore. I can't even feel it in the moment, because I still like to argue and I still want to do capital-R Right, but my brain stopped really working for a while. My mental health followed. What few good projects I did and was proud of felt more like the work of other people (even though in retrospect I more than carried my weight) or were things I built out of spite to prove that, no, I really did know what I was talking about, jerks.
Of course, they're not jerks, and I'm friends or friendly with even the folks in my management chain now that I no longer work there. (Getting a 50% raise to leave didn't hurt.) But I can't be a meat puppet, it's not in my nature, and I feel like that's the case for most of the really really good programmers I know.
The times when I've gotten the ratio that high have been times when I've been learning new skills while building new things. There's something to be said to building something using that new cool new framework. Its got to still be relevant but this can definitely help. There are many right ways to solve most problems and some are more fun.
However, I think the only reason I was able to enjoy learning programming was because of how adept I already was with computers as a "power user", because it gave me the physical skills and conceptual underpinnings required to appreciate the field.
To me, this raises an important question.
If you lack the physical skills or are a novice in a field, it can be frustrating or intimidating to learn even if you would otherwise enjoy being competent. For example, learning to draw: should one accept their dislike of basic beginning drawing practice to imply that drawing is not an appropriate vocation for them? Difficult question; probably depends on the person. The only way to know if you love drawing at a competent level is to reach that level. In a sense it begs the question: how can you tell if you will enjoy doing something until you have the ability to actually do it?
I don't think there is an easy way to solve this problem; you simply have to put the effort into practicing new things even if you don't enjoy the practice. That's where you get into willpower, commitment, etc. My experience of the world is that you simply cannot expect to be successful by only doing things that don't feel like work; sometimes, you have to actually do the work.