
In Praise of Mediocrity - anarbadalov
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/in-praise-of-mediocrity.html
======
wtracy
I had a little epiphany: Before the internet, and before people lived in large
cities, the circle of people we came into contact might be only a couple
hundred people.

Out of two or three hundred people, it's not hard to be in the top tenth
percentile at _something_.

When your circle of acquaintances is the whole internet, being in the top
tenth percentile of _anything_ takes years of determined effort.

Our brains still have expectations rooted in these smaller communities: That
we should be able to create something exceptional and praiseworthy for our
efforts.

Today, it's hard to get praise for anything we do, unless it's from our
families, or unless we do something truly world class. (Case in point: The
other week someone shared some generative artwork here, and it got promptly
criticized for not being "gallery worthy".) In the face of that, we
instinctively give up.

~~~
Maximus9000
I agree.

To be fair, it's not new (only magnified).

I remember a kid in highschool in the 90's. He was the best in our entire
highschool at math. Any math contest in our school, he would win it.

He go accepted into Aerospace engineering at an elite university. Suddenly,
his math skills were only mediocre compared to his new peers. He became
depressed after this. He was always the "math guy"... now what is he?

That was in the 90's.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Getting a job at Google has done this to me in regards to programming. For the
last 7 years I've felt like an impostor whereas before I grew irritated by the
mediocrity around me.

~~~
xtxt
After watching how Google engineers interact with engineers from other
companies, this checks out. It's very easy to believe that everyone there is
irritated by the mediocrity of the world outside of Google when they have to
interact with it.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Don't underestimate the internal mediocrity at Google. It's just not so much
technical mediocrity as organizational.

------
skrebbel
Come to Europe, we're all super mediocre here and it's great.

Less snarky, I find that attaching your identity to what you do is a
profoundly American thing. "I'm a Rubyist", "I'm a runner", "I'm a
Republican". The moment you are what you do, everything becomes so..
_important_.

I'm not sure if this is just my filter bubble, but most people I know "like to
make demos" (as in Demoscene[0]), "enjoy speed cycling on Sunday mornings",
"run a business" and "voted for the social democrats last election". It's not
just a semantic difference.

BTW, if you really want to experience what I'm talking about, visit a
demoparty. Some people making demos are really absurdly good at what they do,
it's daunting (and still _totally worthless_ btw). Nevertheless you'll see
_lots_ of other people make demos, and really do their best at it. They know
they're going to lose the compo if at least one of the big shots have an
entry, but they don't care. It's an absolutely wonderful experience. (and very
encouraging) (and it sometimes makes you put out horrible crap that you're
ashamed of later but hey it was fun at the time)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Less snarky, I find that attaching your identity to what you do is a
profoundly American thing. "I'm a Rubyist", "I'm a runner", "I'm a
Republican". The moment you are what you do, everything becomes so..
important.

For the better part of a millennium people in Europe changed professions so
little from generation to generation that it became baked into their last
names in some places.

~~~
buboard
I dont think that s the way it goes. Its just that if there was 1 smith in a
village he was identified as such. The occupation had to be rare and important
( eg they wouldn t call you farmer. His children would keep the name
regardless of their job (given that ppl had a lot of kids and the job had to
be rare it s impossible that they d all do the same job)

~~~
maigret
Many Germans are actually named “Bauer” (which means “Farmer“), or variations
of it.

------
david-cako
This is a phenomenon I think a lot about -- how globalization and the sheer
amount of information we have available requires you to either drastically
increase your expectations of yourself or drop them all together.

Think about what being an alpha among a primitive group of humans (or apes)
entails. It's part something that is internalized and demonstrated by that
individual, and part reinforced socially by the rest of a small group of
people who, within the context of the group, plainly recognize that individual
as "best". This same dynamic exists for craftsmen among the group, for
instance.

Being at the top is always a function of where everyone else on your radar is
at. It's just now you have to be your own cheerleader, because it's a much
bigger pond.

You have to make calculated decisions about how different things validate you
(recreation vs greatness); being great at something in the 21st century really
means putting your head down and having an unwavering faith in yourself. You
have to keep lifting yourself back up, as the reward is always 10 steps out
and always fleeting. At the same time, you now have an infinite amount of
resources and inspiration for what you could become. You aren't limited by the
nearest available expert, and you aren't limited by your imagination. It's all
there for you to pick off the shelf.

~~~
joefourier
Another option is to specialize to a very large degree. It's possible for
almost anyone (assuming sufficient motivation) to become a leading expert in a
field or the one of the best at some activity, as long as it's sufficiently
niche. You may have to go in a subfield of a subfield of a subfield in many
cases, but it's much more realistic to be in the top 10 of something with just
a few hundred practitioners than something with a few million.

Take music, becoming one of the top 100 pop musicians on the planet in terms
of popularity is incredibly unlikely, but top 100 of some more obscure genre
(such as synthwave) is more achievable. You can add more qualifiers - (e.g.
Italo-disco inspired synthwave) until you feel comfortable with the pool of
competitors, and you'll be far less at risk of feeling insignificant and
overshadowed.

~~~
wink
Please tell me Italo-disco inspired synthwave is not something you made up on
the spot. I need links :)

~~~
RichardCA
[https://youtu.be/5ziInu6xglE](https://youtu.be/5ziInu6xglE)

~~~
wink
That's super cool, but in my amateur opinion that's just covering/redoing
proper Italo Disco, it's not synthwave.

------
apo
_If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you’re
training for the next marathon. If you’re a painter, you are no longer passing
a pleasant afternoon, just you, your watercolors and your water lilies; you
are trying to land a gallery show or at least garner a respectable social
media following. When your identity is linked to your hobby — you’re a yogi, a
surfer, a rock climber — you’d better be good at it, or else who are you?_

Similar thoughts cross my mind every time I'm passed by a cyclist with a
$2,500 bike wearing technicolor corporate spandex.

As someone riding an ancient bike in a grubby, flapping getup, I sometimes
wonder who's having more fun.

~~~
Baeocystin
I see a lot of MAMILs (middle-aged men in lycra) on my regular rides. What I
genuinely never see is them smiling- the person may change, but various levels
of grimace is the universal expression. If they truly are enjoying themselves,
they hide it pretty well.

I say this without judgment. I ride a custom recumbent, so it's not like I
have anything against spending money on the hobby. But I do wonder what the
drive is that seems to affect so many people the same way.

~~~
d1zzy
YMMV but the reason I bike to work (and have been biking to work for the past
7 years) is because I enjoy the experience of going as hard as I can, heart
pumping, asphalt rolling fast under my wheel while taking turns fast, feeling
wind in my hair. You won't see me smiling (while passing you at 25mph) just
like you won't see someone at the gym smiling when pushing heavy weights, but
I prefer my commute to the alternative of driving stuck in traffic. Because
for me the alternative isn't "bike relaxed, take in the nature", that's just
too boring and slow and it doesn't hold any interest to me.

So you people need to stop being judgy. I won't judge someone because they
ride a crappy looking bike in crappy clothes so don't judge someone for riding
a fancy looking bike in lycra (which btw is very comfortable athletic wear,
you should try it). Everyone is having fun in their own way, they have their
own motivations for doing some of the same things. Just because I put a lot of
effort (and money) into my biking it doesn't mean I don't enjoy it, it's my
favorite part of going to work.

~~~
Baeocystin
Did you mean to reply to me? I think I was clear that what I said was without
judgement. I genuinely don't understand the perspective of the people who
grimace all the time while riding. If you get off on passing people, ok. And
it really is ok, there's nothing wrong with feeling competitive. That's not
what it is about for me, and I both bike and lift, and push myself hard. I
just enjoy the process and the camaraderie.

~~~
darkerside
I think parent was responding to the appearance that you don't understand the
fact that someone can be enjoying themselves without smiling.

~~~
Baeocystin
I assume they're getting something out of it, but it sure doesn't seem to be
anything I would call joy.

~~~
cullenking
I race motorcycles. I don't get joy out of it, I get satisfaction and a
feeling of achievement. I get a feeling of ultimate focus for 15 minutes.
Nothing compares to it. I can't imagine processing the experience as an
emotion, that would require taking focus away from the knife edge of going
fast but not fast enough to crash. My good friend races with me and he says
it's the most fun thing ever, he's grinning in his helmet. We are doing the
same thing, we are getting something positive from it, but we have completely
different ways we experience it.

~~~
Baeocystin
Thanks for the friendly reply. Appreciated.

------
Emma_Goldman
I think one of the best possible desiderata for society is to reconfigure work
so that we do a lot less of it, and so that less of our self-identity and
self-respect depends upon it.

By the way, for those that didn't realise, this article is clearly riffing off
Bertrand Russell's well-known essay, 'In Praise of Idleness'.

~~~
afpx
When I bring that up to many people, they gawk. That’s just abhorrent. But, at
some point, that must be the end goal, right?

For at least five generations, my ancestors have been working hard to “give
their kids a better life.” But, at what point will the goal be to give one’s
kids the time and resources to be idle? If I was president of the world, I’d
make that Humanity’s moonshot project.

Of course, it may not ever be possible. But, hey, there are 100 million people
out there smarter than me. Surely, someone can figure it out.

~~~
chasote
Your comment reminded me of this quote even though it might not entirely fit
the topic at hand:

"I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study
Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematicks and
philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation,
commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study
painting, poetry, musick, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelaine.”
John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, May 12, 1780.

As I said, it might not apply to this overall discussion but I've always found
it quite poignant. Sadly society is more apt to ridicule those who still
pursue liberal arts due to it's economic opportunity costs. While technically
correct I believe that should come from the viewpoint that this could be
considered a sad failure in humanity's progress.

~~~
burfog
If only that were the end, but it is a cycle:

    
    
        Hard times create strong men,
        Strong men create good times,
        Good times create weak men,
        Weak men create hard times.
    

Progress is something desirable only when you are in the bad part of that
cycle. When you are in the good part of that cycle, progress takes you around
to the bad part.

~~~
watwut
I dont think that poem describes real world and real history. Hard times often
generated men who did not created good times, but create even worst way more
violent oppressive times. Think world wars, French revolution, communists in
Russia etc.

Hard times create hard people and that that can have very unfortunate
consequences.

And good times did not necessary created men who create hard times, they often
created men wanted to keep things good.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _And good times did not necessary created men who create hard times, they
> often created men wanted to keep things good._

But did they? Looking at the world today, I feel that good times create men
who take good times for granted, not understanding what made those good times
possible in the first place, and who through inaction or cluelessness work to
undo those things. See e.g. our generation working hard to undo all the
improvements for the workers, ones which our great-^n-grandparents paid in
blood for.

~~~
watwut
Given that I don't know which generation and country you are from, it is hard
to counteract. I don't know who or what causes your great-^n-grandparents were
fighting for. I have no idea about link between past wars and whatever your
generation is undoing.

If anything else it sounds a bit like caricature. Past generation fought
against others of the past generation. Members of past generations have
different interests and some have good life others bad. So maybe it is more
about which sub-group of whatever generation is winning and able to
effectively push for own interests.

~~~
TeMPOraL
For the sake of context, I would be an early millennial from Poland.

But my point is applicable to pretty much the entire western world; the
struggle of our great-^n-grandparents is the one against insanely bad working
conditions in the XIX and early XX century. The one that gave us modern
employment laws, which both my fellow millennials and gen-X'ers are trying
hard to revert.

~~~
burfog
This is backwards. It is a good economy that made those employment laws
possible. The good times came first.

Overdoing those employment laws will strangle the economy, pushing us around
the cycle to hard times. It is the "weak men" who push for this, trying to
avoid even the modest amount of suffering that is required to be competitive.

Backing off on those laws will delay collapse.

You really don't want to see the collapse. At that point, employment laws
count for nothing. You work illegally or you starve.

~~~
TeMPOraL
This isn't backwards, unless somehow _not touching_ employment laws is
strangling the economy. Nobody is trying to overdo those laws; they're mostly
fine, but businesses these days increasingly try to skirt them and make such
practices the new default.

------
dougmwne
The American time use statistics make it pretty clear. Our hobby is watching
television and using our phones. Anyone who says they have "no hobby" almost
certainly spends hours of entertainment time each day at a screen. People just
mean they have no other hobby aside from the default hobby.

The same goes for anyone claiming they have no free time. No free time after
sleep, work, kids and screen entertainment.

It's not at all clear to me that people WANT a different hobby than the one
they've got.

~~~
Eridrus
Yeah, I'm not entirely clear what counts as a hobby and what doesn't.

I went to a comedy show tonight. Does that count as a hobby? I don't think so,
but it's also clearly a leisure activity.

Does reading count as a hobby? It's still fairly passive, but less so than
just watching. What about video games? Definitely not just passive, but how
much do you have to play for it to be a hobby?

I also have no idea where this claim that we're all to competitive to have
hobbies comes from. I, like the tech bro stereotype, enjoy rock climbing, the
only thing that gets in the way is my laziness, not comparing myself to those
far better than myself. No-one I have climbed with has expressed status
anxiety about what they can and cannot climb, though I admit to being a tad
competitive with those who I am close in ability to.

This author is in some super weird bubble that I have never really seen, but
that's probably because I don't have kids, and that probably has a bigger
impact than anything this article is talking about.

------
anarbadalov
"... there’s a deeper reason, I’ve come to think, that so many people don’t
have hobbies: We’re afraid of being bad at them. Or rather, we are intimidated
by the expectation — itself a hallmark of our intensely public, performative
age — that we must actually be skilled at what we do in our free time."

Yep.

~~~
jarsin
I love tennis and anytime someone finds out I spend money on lessons etc the
response is typically

Them: you know your not 20 anymore so you have no chance of going pro right?

Me: Yep

Them: (stares dumbfounded)

~~~
ghaff
That seems weird. I haven’t taken skiing lessons in years but I certainly took
them, as many friends did, long after the time there would have been any
chance of pro.

And I find it hard to believe tennis is much different. Lots of people take
lessons who don’t have personal coaches in many sports.

~~~
chongli
I think people give skiing lessons a pass because you can break your neck if
you make a mistake on the hill. You're a lot less likely to die while playing
tennis.

~~~
ghaff
Downhill skiing isn't really dangerous although you may fall a lot. We're not
talking skydiving which you probably want some instruction with. I've taken
lessons for skiing but to improve technique and enjoy the sport more, never
because I was concerned about safety.

Country Clubs and other places where people play sports like tennis and golf
have regular lessons. It's not at all unusual for casual players.

I'd add that I'm an instructor/leader for hiking courses with a local club
that gets a few hundred people in programs in a typical year.

------
apocalypstyx
As G.K. Chesterton said: "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."

[https://www.chesterton.org/a-thing-worth-
doing/](https://www.chesterton.org/a-thing-worth-doing/)

~~~
reaperducer
I used to work with a guy who would say, "It's better than good; it's done."

I don't know if that was his original, but I haven't heard it anywhere else.

~~~
ggm
"I don't want it perfect, I want it by Thursday"

\-- J. Pierpont Morgan

------
whatever_dude
I think this a sidee effect of the _goal driven_ mentality so common in the
US. You're never just doing something for your enjoyment; you're doing it for
a goal. It's never, ever, about the journey; it's absolutely always about the
destination. Of course someone in that position won't enjoy a hobby: unless
they can be the best at it, and do it for a reason (money, social status),
they won't do it.

Yesterday I was in the train and I overheard two young girls talking. One of
them said she hoped she'd be made captain of her sports team at school,
"because it would look good for college". That's it. That's the whole reason.
Fill a role not because you want to contribute, or because you think you'd be
good at it, but because it will be one more bullet point in a few years.

This is part of a trend where I see kids growing being instructed to use 100%
of their time with goal achievements. Leisure time is a reason for shame.
Hobbies would just be a waste your time. You can't _find out who you are_;
instead you just need to check the imaginary boxes set by someone else that
will guarantee a superficially successful life.

~~~
RankingMember
And one of the end results I see (and have done myself) is people give up as
soon as they see they're not immediately a natural at something.

------
FrankyHollywood
I think this goes far beyond just hobby's and leisure activities. Society as a
whole doesn't seem to accept mediocrity anymore.

Take a look at the actors from 80's hit movie 'Ghostbusters' [http://cdn-
media.hollywood.com/images/l/ghostbustersthetrio....](http://cdn-
media.hollywood.com/images/l/ghostbustersthetrio.jpg)

Would these guys be casted today? I can't imagine, we see mostly perfect faces
on television.

Movies and television are not even the worst, advertising is insane. If you
count the number of 'perfects' in some commercials you easily hear it 4 to 5
times in just a couple of seconds. You need perfect skin, a perfect dream
kitchen, a perfect ride in a perfect car, etc.

Why do people want this? Can't blame it all to hollywood...

------
jackconnor
In addition to "worried about not being good at them", I think the competition
for hobbies has greatly increased, too. My grandpa used to sit around on his
porch in Indiana whittling because there was nothing else to do at night
besides read and drink Budweiser (his other two favorite hobbies). Now, I can
think of ten fun places to go at any hour and a million things I can do online
and, all of a sudden, whittling doesn't seem so entertaining. That being said,
I think that the author doesn't fully acknowledge modern hobbies (gaming comes
to mind) which are part of staring at screens. In general, I believe we should
always pursue hobbies we find enjoyable, no matter the difficulty, for their
own sake, so maybe we just need to reset expectations a bit.

~~~
FooHentai
That choice paralysis thing is a devil, too. I used to love video gaming and
would hyper focus on a single game for months/years at a time.

Now I have hundreds of games on Steam, most of which far exceed those earlier
games in depth and quality, and I'm meh about the whole lot.

------
greedo
I've taken up woodworking as a hobby after not doing much in that vein since
7th grade. Using hand tools, not power tools, and taking time. One of the
leaders in this movement is Paul Sellers [1], who couldn't be kindler and more
inspirational. One of his key points that he stresses is that "It's not what
you make, but how you make it."

I know I'll never come close to the skill level he exhibits, but I hope to
approach his level of sang froid and equanimity.

[1] [https://paulsellers.com/](https://paulsellers.com/)

~~~
raister
Yes. Paul Sellers is the best. As well as:

\- James Wright, Wood by Wright -
[https://www.woodbywright.com/](https://www.woodbywright.com/)

\- Tom Fidgen - The unplugged woodshop

\- Mike Siemsen

\- Rob Cosman - [https://robcosman.com/](https://robcosman.com/)

\- Frank Klausz

\- Shawn L. Graham, Worth The Effort -
[http://wortheffort.com/index.html](http://wortheffort.com/index.html)

\- Roy Underhill -
[http://www.woodwrightschool.com/](http://www.woodwrightschool.com/)

\- Joshua Farnsworth, Wood and Shop -
[https://woodandshop.com/](https://woodandshop.com/)

\- James Hamilton, aka Stumpy Nubs -
[http://www.stumpynubs.com/](http://www.stumpynubs.com/)

\- Matthew Cremona,
[https://www.mattcremona.com/](https://www.mattcremona.com/)

\- Jay Bates,
[https://jayscustomcreations.com/](https://jayscustomcreations.com/)

\- Shannon Rogers, Renaissance WoodWorker, The Hand Tool School -
[http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/](http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/)

~~~
peatmoss
Man, this list deserves to be a post in its own right.

Incidentally, the Woodwright’s Workshop show on PBS is part of the reason I
donate to keep the “passport” access. Reruns of that show are pretty much the
definition of my happy place.

------
TeMPOraL
This... resonates strongly.

Also, the Internet is both blessing and a curse here. On the one hand, you
have free access to all the information and educational material you need to
quickly get up to speed with pretty much any hobby imaginable. On the other
hand, you also get to see _so many_ people doing _so much better than you_. I
find it subtly intimidating.

------
malvosenior
It's easy not to care how good you are at your hobbies when you're already
really good at something else. It takes a tremendous amount of time and energy
to really master something. There just isn't time in the day left over to
master multiple things.

I'd like to think I'm pretty good at programming. I spend many hours a day
doing it, have studied it for decades and pretty much have been completely
obsessed with computers my whole life.

From that standpoint it's really nice for me to have a few hobbies that are
much less intense and where I can be "not good" but just enjoy myself. The
position this article takes.

That being said, if I wasn't an expert in my field, I may not be able to find
that comfort in being middling at best in other areas. This I think is a lot
of people's problem. The fear of failure (and in the west, anti-intellectual
culture) stop people from even attempting to be great. Not at hobbies but at
_everything_.

So I think the article is correct, but missing hobbies are a second order
effect after missing primary passion.

~~~
westoncb
> It's easy not to care how good you are at your hobbies when you're already
> really good at something else.

I've seen that at play, and it can be a very significant effect. The clearest
instance from my personal experience was in self-studying mathematics. I began
my regimen of study literally the day after finishing my CS degree. I'd had a
'repetitive strain injury' related to computer usage for years at that point,
and had figured I would never be able to work as a programmer again (did a
brief stint as a teenager). I needed to find something else and had been
searching for a long time without luck—but now I had something: I'd just earn
money doing mathematics somehow!

It was grueling to work on at that time because it seemed like my last option
for being able to do something that used my creative/technical abilities as a
career (I was working at a grocery store then to put things in
perspective)—and I just had no idea if I was going to be good enough with math
for it to be a realistic possibility. So it was nerve-wracking anytime I
attempted something that would test my ability.

Several years later, after figuring out the computer use issues—I didn't
_need_ mathematics anymore. But I'd spent a lot of time learning, gaining
proficiency, and developing interests in various areas; so at some point I got
back into studying again. The difference is night and day—I'm far more
productive, and it's just, by comparison to before, no big deal.

Highly recommended if you can settle it with yourself that you're okay with
things however they turn out in relation to some hobby/skill/whatever.

~~~
da02
What injury did you have? How did you solve it?

~~~
westoncb
I could never get a doctor to give a precise answer to that, just, "some kind
of repetitive strain injury." It seems to have had psychological components to
it also: I was so worried about it that I created additional tension there and
never let it relax, and I was always super stiff/tense while using the
computer. So whatever new ergonomics or exercises I tried, I continued
clenching/worrying whenever using a computer. And then I could see that the
tension was making things worse so I'd get worried and more tense because of
that which created a bad feedback effect.

Getting better was partly just learning to not freak out about it—the
situation was manageable and I wasn't going to have to give up my favorite
activity that I'd spent so much of my life training for etc.

More exercise, better ergonomics, and taking breaks also helped. I've been
practicing meditation for a couple years now too, and it's finally been
getting to the point where I can use what I've learned to see and modify the
bad mental patterns I established during 10 years of unpleasant computer use
(including getting out of the feedback effect mentioned above).

------
hkmurakami
As a wise friend of mine once told me, “if it’s worth doing 100%, it’s worth
doing half assed”

------
vinayms
I really like the spirit of the article, and I sympathize with it.

One visible example of this phenomenon is wrt fitness. We often hear gym goers
doing "training" rather than "exercising". That usage in itself shows a sense
of vanity, may be a result of general identity crisis, because most of these
don't compete in anything sports-y, leave alone "strength games"; they train
to train more it seems. I am not saying they ought to compete, that would be
against the spirit of the article which I like, but I am just saying that even
when they don't commit to such achievement oriented pursuit in action, they do
it with words. Most are into fitness to improve their aesthetics but here too
they set unreasonable goals. The level of obsession is unbelievable. They do
the most difficult lifts with the heaviest weights and constantly monitor the
"gains", because anything less is for the sissies. They are the real world Dom
Mazzettis.

~~~
forgottenpass
>We often hear gym goers doing "training" rather than "exercising". That usage
in itself shows a sense of vanity, may be a result of general identity crisis

You're reading way too much into a domain-specific term. "Training" is just
when you have a regimented exercise schedule and routine to improve your body.
Of course there do exist gym rats with motivations and goals a more reasonable
person would consider obsessive. That's because there are for any pursuit. But
your post is a long just-so story about a kind of person that the HN audience
is predisposition to dislike.

~~~
vinayms
> You're reading way too much into a domain-specific term. "Training" is just
> when you have a regimented exercise schedule and routine to improve your
> body.

On the same lines, one can rationalize the empty words such as "synergy" that
corporate marketers use routinely that are taken apart brutally routinely.

------
expathacker
Check out Victor Wooten's Ted Talk on thinking about music as a language. He
compares learning music with learning to talk. The general premise: "Nobody
waits until you're an expert in language before being allowed to speak, why
are you expected to be a master before you can make music with other
musicians?".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zvjW9arAZ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zvjW9arAZ0)

------
egypturnash
This is making me really want to either get back into dancing (burlesque and
pole, so far, who knows what next) or finally pick up that cheap electric
guitar I've wanted most of my life. Because one of the things I really _liked_
about dancing was the room to be an amateur who is not constantly pushing to
take her craft further, worrying about publicity and networking, etc - I was
just some lady who was learning to dance.

A lot of why I quit pole dance was feeling like I had gotten to the point
where I was not going to see any more slow improvement unless I started
seriously focusing on it like it was a major part of by life, and I don't have
_time_ for that.

------
newnewpdro
In the United States at least, there's a very popular hobby which many people
won't admit to practicing:

Consumerism.

And thanks to the internet/smartphones/social media etc. It's practiced 24x7,
while driving, from bed, from the toilet, it's always going on and it
displaces time for and interest in creative pursuits for most.

~~~
extragood
I agree that there are a lot of people practicing that.

I also think that there are so many distractions, things designed to catch our
attention, be addicting, and take our time, that it takes a concerted effort
to allow ourselves to be bored.

Boredom in itself isn't useful, but it gives us the opportunity to motivate
ourselves into trying new things that aren't necessarily "fun" immediately.

------
vpwp
It's quite liberating to be totally shit at everything and fail everybody's
expectations. For some reason we all hit rock bottom at some point. I'm
reminded of this talk from Simon Sinek when somebody at Google asked him what
his worst moments in life were - a rather weird question, but the answer was
great - his life was falling apart and that somehow led him to do more:
[https://sahilparikh.com/simon-sinek-the-finite-and-
infinite-...](https://sahilparikh.com/simon-sinek-the-finite-and-infinite-
games-of-leadership-talks-at-google-e7c490299e5b) I see adults around me all
the time - not doing things. We all have something that holds us back, and it
would seem the more successful we are, the more we are held back. Like it was
pretty weird when Michael Jordan started playing baseball
[https://www.bleachernation.com/2017/02/07/michael-jordans-
ba...](https://www.bleachernation.com/2017/02/07/michael-jordans-baseball-
career-is-the-most-impressive-thing-he-ever-did/) but then the question sort
of becomes - wait, what does everybody do instead? Why don't every great
athlete go try some other random sport instead? And likewise - why don't we
all just go and do it, whatever the "it" may be for ourselves.

------
bkohlmann
I recently completed the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, and we had
an question and answer session with former President George W Bush.

One of my classmates asked him about his painting hobby and if he was afraid
of being bad or of critics.

His reply will always stick with me. He said, “you can’t be afraid to try new
things. If id expected perfection from the start, I would never have started.
To learn requires making mistakes. I paint because I love it - and I don’t
care what anybody else thinks.”

------
emmelaich
I love this sentence:

> _Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence_

------
linhub
I think you should visit South America, everybody is either at just hanging
out or doing their hobby after school/work.

~~~
doon123
Hi, this sounds interesting! Could you please elaborate a bit more. Thanks.

------
projektir
I think a different way to express this problem is comparative measurement vs
absolute measurement.

If you can make a good chair, you can make a good chair. It shouldn't be too
relevant that someone else somewhere can make a good chair.

The same is much harder to see, but is true for more sports-style activities.
Someone who's decent at a sport is still worth respecting, in my view.

But somewhere down the line we removed the "decent", "pretty good", and
"respectable", and replaced it with "sucks", and removed all motivation to get
to those levels. Now you're either the best or you don't count.

------
gerbilly
Part of the drive to be the best may be due to conditional love.

Some of us may have been raised in households where love was given out as a
reward for marks at school or success in sports. And the converse was true as
well, with love being withheld when these goals were not met.

Anyone whose family have treated them this way can tell you that this pattern
is toxic.

Sadly, many of us then go on to internalise this and to treat ourselves this
way,

------
iamgopal
Locally great, globally average ruined quite a few years for me, until I
realised collecting like minded people is the actual goal.

------
eindiran
Does this article match other people's experience? The whole opening premise,
that few people have hobbies now seems entirely wrong to me. I can't think of
anyone I know who doesn't have at least a few hobbies. Many people I know are
significantly into several hobbies, and most people are at least casually
invested in some.

~~~
FrankyHollywood
Not really, I have hobby's just as my friends have them, but I feel rare. I
don't use social media, and I don't have Netflix or hbo. As a software
engineer I have a lot of screen time. At home sometimes I watch a movie or do
some gaming, but I don't hit the 5hr average.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/media/nielsen-
su...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/media/nielsen-survey-media-
viewing.html)

Doing a lot non digital things in my free time is a conscious decision. The
fun thing is you meet a lot of people who are active I as well.

------
Myrmornis
It’s partly the fault of high street retail. Go into a shop to buy running
shoes, and you’re greeted by this barrage of technical nonsense about
“pronation” and details of your running gait and what sort of support you
“need”. of course, it’s just an obvious ruse to get normal people to buy
expensive products, but it contributes to the atmosphere described in the
article. I do blame US retail culture, but the UK is so culturally coupled to
the US in retail that it’s long been the way in the UK also. I’ve even been
videod running on a treadmill to perform gait analysis as if I were a pro
athlete! It’s embarrassing that people suck this all up. But it’s not just
running, try buying a tent or sleeping bag from an outdoor store like REI in
the US. “So what sort of camping do you usually do? What altitude do you
normally camp at?” “Dude I just want a fucking sleeping bag.”

------
domador
Why are we so fixated on ranking people, and strictly on a linear scale? As
soon as you're measuring performance on more than one dimension, it becomes
very hard to rank people. Multivariate competitions, for that matter, are more
interesting to me. I get bored by Olympic disciplines with a one-dimensional
metric (fastest time or longest distance, for the most part), but am far more
interested in team sports where players show a lot of variation among multiple
measurement categories. Participants in team sports can also show a lot more
finesse, creativity, or even craziness than many an Olympian who is just
trying to maximize a single physical quantity in a simple sport.

Competition is often interesting and appealing, but I'd prefer if we didn't
let it distract us in every single activity. In the athletic realm, it's
refreshing for to read about many of parkour's expositors, who seem to
deemphasize competition and focus on personal satisfaction. I don't know how
prevalent this attitude is among its practitioners, but I know that if I ever
took it up, I'd do for my personal enjoyment... and maybe to entertain some of
my friends and family members. For parkour in particular, I'd probably enjoy
it less if it was structured as a competition, rather than as free form
activity where one gets to see where each participant decides to travel and
how they decide to go about it, free from any expectation (other than moving
and avoiding major injury).

Moving away from athletic pursuits, why does it even matter who the top
musician is in a given musical genre? What does that even mean? I don't care
about who the "best" jazz instrumentalist is, but am instead glad that there a
lot of great jazz musicians out there, whose music I can enjoy, whether they
happen to be the best regarded or the most obscure. I only hope that everyone
from the most popular artists "down" to local bands and street musicians can
make a living doing what they love, which also happens to be something I enjoy
to witness, regardless of whatever rank they may have on a given scale.

Other than respect for others, we should not expect anything out of people
that pursue a hobby or recreational interest for their own personal pleasure.
For those creating or doing something for others to enjoy, maybe we just
settle for a certain, subjectively satisfactory level of proficiency with a
given discipline's skills, instead of insisting that everyone seeks to becomes
the "best" at whichever activity they happen to be pursuing.

------
paraschopra
What this article is clearly missing is that "hobbies" is a very modern
concept. Humans never evolved to engage in semi-serious idle pursuits. We have
evolved to compete and seek progress.

What's happening is that the definition of competition and progress has been
massively reconfigured due to social media. But even in pre-Industrial days,
people worked hard to be better off, to accumulate wealth, to increase their
social status. In fact, industrialization is a result of that ingrained work
ethic.

Asking people to be OK with mediocrity is like asking warring nations not to
go to war. It's a well-intentioned but ultimately stupid advice because it
doesn't work. What could work however is reconfiguring social media and
environment: the less an individual gets exposed to competence, the more
s/he'll be able to enjoy whatever s/he is enjoying.

~~~
Err_Eek
I don't think that is entirely true -- surely, "hobbies" is a relatively new
word, but even in pre-industrial times people had plenty of spare time to
waste on stuff like learning songs/poems/card games/etc. Not every second was
crucial for survival.

------
cbogie
I have a lifelong philosophy of getting to about the 80th percentile of
proficiency of any given activity, craft, sport, etc.

A lot of the enjoyment I get from new things is in the rapid rate of
improvement while learning and developing. After about the 80th percentile,
diminishing returns kind of curse the activity, which is meant to provide
leisure, pleasure, and well being. When it becomes a curse, those attributes
are diminished.

Also, to be in the 80th percentile, you could probably 'hang' with any range
of folks involved in the thing, and if I ever want to get back into it after a
break, it'll come back.

Anyways, B- is quite satisfactory.

------
coleifer
It's risky to tie up your ego, or sense of self, with being anything other
than yourSelf. When I started out coding in my career I had a huge chip on my
shoulder. I needed a popular project on github, I needed to be given that big
new project, I needed the recognition and praise of others. I didn't realize I
was setting myself up for a lot of angst. And I'm ashamed of some of the
things I did or said trying to protect my ego, which was now bound up in being
seen by others as a genius programmer. Took me 7 or 8 years to figure it out
and let go.

------
sidcool
How does one find satisfaction in such a world? It's almost impossible for
everyone to be best at something. This brings me down immensely.

------
thebear
I'd like to reinforce what an earlier commenter has already hinted at, with a
story of a collapsing marathon runner. A lot of hobbies get much more
dangerous with increased ambitions. Always ask yourself if that's worth it. As
someone once said, "He who does not sore with the eagles does not get sucked
into jet engines." And they didn't shoot Ringo, did they.

~~~
baddox
Similarly, the early worm gets eaten.

------
vparikh
I think people just need to learn that the journey is the reward, not the
mastery. We in the US are in many ways, over concerned with the perception of
success and the outcome of an activity. Starts very early on -- "Winning isn't
everything. Its the only thing"

------
gexla
There's also a large segment of the world in which people don't have time for
hobbies because they are hustling to survive. As education, medical, housing,
etc explode in costs while wages stagnate, we have to work harder just to get
by.

There are also a lot of angles the author might be missing by condensing a
long article into small blog post. In the case of the jogger posting to social
media and training for marathons, is this person picking up a hobby or is this
person joining a tribe? If the social experience is greater than the activity,
then this example makes sense. It might even be better for people who need the
social experience more than they need the hobby.

I stopped reading at that point. Maybe I missed something later in the article
which addresses the above points.

------
lloyd-christmas
A few scattered thoughts: Much of this article seems to only apply under the
assumption that people didn't have hobbies prior to being a working adult.
Most people I know have hobbies, but those hobbies were developed prior to
being working adults. The article states:

> _most of us will be truly excellent only at whatever we started doing in our
> teens._

So what about all of us that have had our hobbies prior to even being a
teenager? I've been playing piano now for almost 3 decades. I played nearly
every day from age 4 to the day I graduated college. By the article's
admission, I'm _supposed_ to be excellent by now. But... I've steadily gotten
worse since becoming a working professional. I have my 5000+ hours of
practice, but only a few hundred in decade since graduating. My experience
when it comes to these hobbies is that most people drift away from their
interests due to self-comparison, not societal comparison.

The activities mentioned by the article seem to be of the everyday athletic
variety. As adults, we're supposed to be conscious about our health. Nobody
cares if you're a shitty runner when it's an expectation that you're health-
conscious. The same can't be said for the arts and crafts variety of hobbies.
The home brewer doesn't necessarily want you to try their shitty beer; The
illustrator doesn't want to show their stick figures; The woodworker doesn't
want you to sit in the chair that's probably going to break under your weight,
regardless of whether or not they had fun making it. The office talk of "what
did you do last night?" is a lot easier to answer with "went for a
run"/"watched the same TV show as you" rather than having to follow up with
the inevitable Q&A about your hobby. Let's say I mentioned that I was playing
piano ("I've been playing since I was 4!"). The next time my team goes for
drinks and there is a piano in the bar, people want to hear me play. Do I
really want to publicly struggle to play a piece I was able to easily perform
when I was 12? That doesn't sound like very much fun to me.

> _you are trying to land a gallery show or at least garner a respectable
> social media following_

People put their best foot forward, which also assumes they have a good foot
to begin with. If you suck at something, you usually don't put it up on your
Instagram. My point is really just that I don't talk about my hobby, and I
assume that's also somewhat common for hobbies that aren't the typical
everyday athletic variety. While I realize there are statistics that heavily
back TV-as-a-hobby, I think the author has a bit of a selection bias and that
there is under-appreciated amount of people that simply have no desire to
discuss their hobbies. The discussion can detract from the enjoyment you get
from the hobby itself.

------
Bucephalus355
I came across an old Dow Chemical Company ad of chemists in a lab from the
1950’s a few weeks ago.

Narrator: “As you can see, no geniuses here, just hardworking average
Americans”

Hearing that made me sad. I’m not sure why.

~~~
ambicapter
Possibly the casual maligning of "smart people".

------
the_cat_kittles
great premise, well articulated. its fairly obvious to me that capitalism in
our current environment generates insane winner take all scenarios, which are
partially responsible for this mentality of only doing things you are good at.
the joy of learning is highest when you move from novice to intermediate, the
maximum external reward is when you move from master to the best in the world.

------
watwut
> If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block

Jogging is really boring and those large goas are only way to make it fun. In
the past, people typically were not jogging at all.

It is not that competitions killed causual jogging - more that they made
people stick with it and like it.

------
msiyer
Finding the true strength hidden deep inside is the only way to not get lost
in the chaos of achieving more than the other guy. Something Alexander
Grothendieck said is so relevant:

In those critical years I learned how to be alone. [But even] this formulation
doesn't really capture my meaning. I didn't, in any literal sense learn to be
alone, for the simple reason that this knowledge had never been unlearned
during my childhood. It is a basic capacity in all of us from the day of our
birth. However these three years of work in isolation [1945–1948], when I was
thrown onto my own resources, following guidelines which I myself had
spontaneously invented, instilled in me a strong degree of confidence,
unassuming yet enduring, in my ability to do mathematics, which owes nothing
to any consensus or to the fashions which pass as law....By this I mean to
say: to reach out in my own way to the things I wished to learn, rather than
relying on the notions of the consensus, overt or tacit, coming from a more or
less extended clan of which I found myself a member, or which for any other
reason laid claim to be taken as an authority. This silent consensus had
informed me, both at the lycée and at the university, that one shouldn't
bother worrying about what was really meant when using a term like "volume,"
which was "obviously self-evident," "generally known," "unproblematic,"
etc....It is in this gesture of "going beyond," to be something in oneself
rather than the pawn of a consensus, the refusal to stay within a rigid circle
that others have drawn around one—it is in this solitary act that one finds
true creativity. All others things follow as a matter of course.

Since then I've had the chance, in the world of mathematics that bid me
welcome, to meet quite a number of people, both among my "elders" and among
young people in my general age group, who were much more brilliant, much more
"gifted" than I was. I admired the facility with which they picked up, as if
at play, new ideas, juggling them as if familiar with them from the
cradle—while for myself I felt clumsy, even oafish, wandering painfully up an
arduous track, like a dumb ox faced with an amorphous mountain of things that
I had to learn (so I was assured), things I felt incapable of understanding
the essentials or following through to the end. Indeed, there was little about
me that identified the kind of bright student who wins at prestigious
competitions or assimilates, almost by sleight of hand, the most forbidding
subjects.

In fact, most of these comrades who I gauged to be more brilliant than I have
gone on to become distinguished mathematicians. Still, from the perspective of
thirty or thirty-five years, I can state that their imprint upon the
mathematics of our time has not been very profound. They've all done things,
often beautiful things, in a context that was already set out before them,
which they had no inclination to disturb. Without being aware of it, they've
remained prisoners of those invisible and despotic circles which delimit the
universe of a certain milieu in a given era. To have broken these bounds they
would have had to rediscover in themselves that capability which was their
birthright, as it was mine: the capacity to be alone.

------
ereastman
super soft

------
Simon_says
It sorta makes sense that the New York Times is advocating mediocrity.

------
julienreszka
I dislike this article.

------
lifeisstillgood
Recently an elite marathon runner collapsed just before the finishing line -
it turns out that "elite" athletes seem to simply ignore their bodies danger
signals

I honestly don't want to push myself that far. 10 minutes a mile is fine

~~~
ip26
That's a bit of an oversimplification, but culturally I notice we prize
success & effort & grit in the moment, and pay very little attention to
training. This results in athletes who drive themselves over the brink trying
to make up for their lack of training.

A favorite quote of mine:

 _The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare_

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
It's how everyone arrives on Survivor without knowing how to make a fire -
what did you think was going to happen? I understand that the Venn diagram
between "people narcissistic enough to be on reality tv" and "people who like
to plan ahead" is probably the number 8, but even still, c'mon!

edit: Survive? No, Survivor.

~~~
taneq
I came to the conclusion years ago that the selection criteria for shows like
that is nothing to do with skills and everything to do with entertainment.
They want a mix of pretty-but-dumb people, good-honest-family people, and
assholes.

------
paavoova
_the simple pleasure of doing something you merely, but truly, enjoy._

I, for one, don't enjoy perpetually wallowing in mediocrity. The sense of
fleeting time gone to waste weighs heavily on both the conscious and
unconscious of my mind.

There's a difference between not having a life's chance at being a competitive
athlete but still trying within the best of your means to progress within the
sport, and "taking it easy" and treating physical activity solely as
occasional recreation. But this article argues for the latter - why? If you're
not training for the next marathon, then why are you running in the first
place? If you ask me, running the same pace, the same distance, year after
year, is a waste of time no matter how much you enjoy it.

And this viewpoint leads to slow decrepitude, because if you treat all of your
hobbies so casually, you can never improve but only digress. Take physical
activity, again, as an example: as you age, as natural hormonal production
declines, as wear and tear builds up, that casual run around the block can
only ever become more infrequent, more prone to injury, and thus slower and
slower until one day you're not running at all. But striving to be the best
runner you can be from the get-go, regardless if you have a chance at
competitiveness, learning about health and longevity in the sport, will allow
you to persevere far longer than the casual _merely_ enjoying themselves on
occasion.

There's also general consumerism, which this article brings up for me.
"Enjoyment", "fun", is largely inherent. It's then easy to say "have fun,
enjoy yourself", because that goes without saying. It's far harder to put time
and effort into an activity and derive pleasure from it, and the chance for
failure is not only higher but more devastating. Develop chronic injury years
into your sport of choice? It's over. Don't enjoy the Netflix show you're
watching? Turn on another one until you do. Of course most people wouldn't
consider watching Netflix a hobby. But that's only because they're at the
lowest possible level of mediocrity, because, perhaps, they value cheap ideals
of entertainment over all else. In reality, film and television as a medium
spans over a century of arts and culture, waiting for you to delve into and
master. But if you take this article to heart, you'll instead be content
wallowing in the "simple pleasure" of consumption.

