8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Tag: millions of hobbies

Chapter List

  • Fading Maths

    It would be easy to blame a lack of attention, or a clinical disorder of the same, but taking on a new hobby or creative skill and watching the shininess of it fade quickly is not a disorder of self, it’s just the math of progression.

    Maybe you have just taken up study of a new instrument or have picked up the supplies to tackle an artistic medium you’ve never before dabbled in.

    Your first attempt to create is going to be one hundred percent new progress.

    Your second attempt is going to build on that newness, so it will not be all new, but there is still so much to learn.

    Your third, fourth, fifth and so on for the first dozen explorations of your new interest will yield progressively less new growth, but still represent a lot of new.

    But then eventually (and soon) the newness will plateau. It will seem for all the effort you are putting in you are barely experiencing anything new, barely growing, barely learning. (Even if you are, in truth.) 

    And there’s the root of the equation. Our brains like the newness. We are rewarded with a hit of dopamine, a feel-good moment of joy for experiencing something novel, and those hits come with decreasing frequency as we move from being a beginner in the early stages into a student practicing yet-to-be-honed talents. 

    The math isn’t on our side. So we need to calculate a way to keep our interest and push through towards mastery.

  • Dabbling On

    The risk when taking on any new project is that it might all too quickly become another notch on one’s chalkboard of failed projects. The risk of dabbling is that often, ultimately, boredom sets in and you find yourself moving on to something else new.

    If being a dabbler bothers you, how does one stop dabbling and start honing and refining—especially if one is inclined to be more of a dabbler than a deep diver?

    I admit, I am a bit of a shiny object guy when it comes to my hobbies. I see something new and interesting and yeah, admittedly I often do dive deeply into it for a while—that is, usually, until I’ve learned enough about said shiny object that learning about it becomes less interesting than it was at the beginning. And then often, said shiny object goes on the shelf, forgotten.

    Dabbling done… next.

    To fight through and beyond the honeymoon period for any new project my personal tactic has generally been to use goals or public accountability or external commitments. It’s neither complex nor especially obscure. Signing up for a language class for group accountability… or telling everyone you meet your running goal race… or planning a trip to sketch in another country. All are examples of great counter-dabbling tools.

    These sorts of external motivators create a kind of reward system to overcome the raw dopamine drop when the innate rewards of dabbling fade. 

    Or… just don’t do any of that. Dabbling in countless interesting hobbies to sample what life has to offer, well, that’s fine, too.