One of the opportunities and pitfalls of writing publicly about the career and life lessons you’ve learned, as I have in my 2 recent books, is that you feel a sense of obligation to practice them and a bit ashamed when you don’t.
One of the core ideas I promote is to always be engaged seriously in something you are a novice or beginner at. A related one is to try to learn a new language every 10-15 years.
Let me digress for a moment to say that all the success strategies I write about in my books are things that I have practiced and continue to practice. These are not techniques I have simply read about, researched, or dabbled in – they are ones that I have used and benefited from over the years. However, the closest I came to writing one that I was not practicing (among the 214 in the book When in Doubt, Ask for More) was the one about learning languages. At the last moment I changed the wording of that lesson from mastering a new language every 10 years to every 10-15 years, in order to give myself a chance at learning a third language within my suggested timeframe.
As I wrote in the chapter titled “Beginner’s Mind” in Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind, doing something I am a novice at helps me be more humble and more curious, and also less self-important (among other benefits). However, as I spend the month of August learning Spanish intensively, I have been reminded of the challenges of putting this idea into practice.
First, doing something you aren’t good at but want to get good at can be (at least for me) quite draining at times. Trying to keep up with the rest of my work on top of 6 hours of Spanish classes per day almost felt like too much this week. Being around people who are good at something you aren’t (yet) competent at can be humbling and frustrating. There is always a risk of engaging in more than the usual amount of negative self-talk (a trap that we all fall into) when you are the worst at something you care about, compared to those around you. (On the other hand, the sense of exhilaration when one senses progress can be an excellent antidote.)
Second, learning new skills as an adult usually takes a decent amount of time and/or money. It was one thing to become a solid intermediate cook during the pandemic, since we needed to eat, I was spending less time commuting, and it actually saved us money compared to ordering in. It’s quite another to take a month in Antigua to study a new language now that my teaching, consulting, and writing work are going full tilt. (Fortunately, the owner of the excellent school that I returned to after 17 years, San Jose el Viejo Spanish School, gave me a room upgrade that ensured access to a kitchen, so I can cook for myself most days instead of eating out, which saves a lot of money. I highly recommend this as a place to learn.)
One of the interesting things I have been wondering about while reviving my Spanish is the variability in terms of how quickly my skills erode. I have been surprised by how much Spanish I have retained after not using it much for nearly two decades. On the other hand, when I tried my hand at playing basketball recently after a long gap, my jump shot, which I charitably would have called “average” back when I played regularly, had become a pitiful, even laughable one. I’m curious about what factors contribute to some skills sticking much more than others after years of disuse.
Anyway, another technique I use is to continually think about what I want, and then to get proud of wanting those things and to start asking people for help in realizing them. Part of the trick is to not immediately dismiss anything as too expensive or difficult or otherwise unattainable to achieve. Instead, keep it alive as an idea. Sometimes a slight redefinition of what one wants, or a reconsideration about how it can be attained or who might enjoy helping you with it, can make something that feels completely out of reach to be within it.
Let me give a few examples. If you had asked me last September to name four things that I wanted but felt would be difficult to impossible to make happen and I had responded honestly, I would have probably included these 4: getting my Spanish back to the high intermediate level it was at in 2004, installing solar panels on the roof of my home, decreasing my consumption of alcohol (mostly wine) by 60% and to a level most doctors considered safe, and getting a new edition of my first major book, Small Loans, Big Dreams, published.
Well, by applying my technique and with critical support from my a)plan coach and my wife Emily, I have already accomplished one of the four, and will have the other three checked off by the end of this month. These milestones are sufficiently meaningful to me that I believe I will mark 2022 as one of the most important years of my life as a result of these breakthroughs.
What new skills are you considering developing that would require you to go through the process of being a novice? How might making a go at them make you a better nonprofit leader and person? What desires to you have that you have relegated to “unattainable” that might be easier to realize than you assume, especially if you get proud of wanting them and start asking (more) people for help with them?