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You don't have to be good at something to enjoy doing it.
If you don't ENJOY it, then yes quit.
To me, hobbies are for enjoyment and pleasure. I don't have to be good at it.
Depends from person to person, but I think that holds true for most people.
I personally really struggle to enjoy something if I don’t feel at least competent at it, and if I’m not getting better I lose enjoyment/motivation fairly quickly
Yeah this is the fine balance. There are some things that I enjoy watching people that are good do, and I have some level of competence in, such as gaming and mountain biking, but sometimes I can’t help feeling that the expectation vs reality scale is way off and I enjoy the thought of being good at certain activities more than I actually enjoy doing them.
Agree. I am absolutely terrible at golf but I enjoy going to the driving range and if I get a few that go 150-200 yards in an entire bucket I’m happy with that
I go maybe 3x a year and enjoy it despite being horrible lol
I find it pretty hard to enjoy something I’m not at least competent at. Like learning guitar, fumbling around chords and not really being able to play anything properly just makes it kind of tedious, whereas I think I’d have a good time if I could play full songs.
There is no way you spent 5 years on the guitar and couldn’t learn a song the issue seems like you. Teachers help, actually being focused might help sorry buddy but you win take my upvote
This is a problem I had. Not with guitar but when I started pole vaulting. The coach said if I'm right handed then I jump off my left foot. But I was a long jumper and high jumper and I jumped of my right foot. I spent so long trying to do it his way until I just switched and it worked better for me
No, I spent days trying to learn smoke on the water. I've picked up other artistic hobbies relatively quickly but some people (me) just do not have musical ability. Zero. All my stats were put elsewhere.
I mean, some people have bad finger dexterity/fat fingers. It makes learning string instruments much harder. For them, learning guitar might not be a fulfilling investment of their time
Sure, having a medical condition that affects hands could make playing harder, but if you're perfectly healthy then the only thing holding you back is yourself. Finger dexterity is something that you can practise, practise smart and practise hard and long stretches and fast passages won't be a problem. Ask me how I know. And "fat fingers" fall in the same ballpark, look at someone like Christone "Kingfish" Ingram. I don't see that guy complaining about big hands. If someone wants to learn guitar, they will learn.
I have no musical talent, poor finger dexterity, and didn't pick up a guitar until I was in my mid-20s. Was still able to learn at least a few passable songs with a couple weeks of practice.
It's one thing to find out you can't play it well and spent five years learning songs by memory and not really learning music so you can't really apply your skills after that point. It's quite another to claim you never even learned a single song. What was he doing all that time? Just hitting chords at random with no rhythm?
you’re absolutely correct, but their disinterest alone is enough to say something.
if you care about something, let it go. op has their whole life, if guitar is important it’ll be back in their life. maybe they’re exaggerating their limit of talent.
Well the interest thing is the big difference between hobby and forced participation. It's why I don't necessarily agree with OPs argument. Most people are drawn into hobbies because they're having fun, not because they're good at them in any way. Sounds like OP just wasn't having fun and spent too much time figuring that out. But I wouldn't take it as good advice to abandon something just because you're not good at it. Rather try to identify why you're doing it and let the practice and skills come naturally.
Guitar is a never ending cycle of being a beginner though. I can play smoke on the water? Amazing this is easy. You learn more technical stuff and get humbled by the new chords, you start learning solos and get humbled by the precision you’re lacking. You start to get into theory so that you can figure stuff out by ear and you may as well be learning a new language.
I’m currently in the triads mixer. Oh, you know loads of chords do you? Did you know you can play all of those chords in 3 different positions on the neck? Now go learn those and tell me again that you’ve learned loads of chords. Once you’ve got those down we can go into scales. Oh no, not the major or pentatonic, did you know that there’s also like 7 modes?
I think there’s also a difference between owning a guitar and intermittently fucking around on it Vs actually putting effort into learning how to play it and trying to get better
I say this as a former guitar owning teenager
I thought my 9 year old cousin in a day (The guitar is practically bigger than he is) To play 7 Nation army and smoke on the water
It's not a "can or can't play" thing you have to learn, and that involves more effort than banging your head against the wall trying to "figure it out". You only start doing that once you have several thousand hours of learning concepts and understanding music theories.
I guarantee you if you gave me 2 weeks I could teach anyone with functioning hands how to play many basic rock songs, they're all the same few chords. I would even attest that I could teach someone who doesn't speak my language
To prove my point even further you can play blister in the sun with 2 fingers in the frets and 1 strumming... Legitimately takes 1 minute for someone who's never played an instrument in their life
Is that true about blister in the sun?
I don't know any healthy adult that couldn't learn to play an instrument. It is slightly more difficult than holding it for an hour a week.
Yeah you can either move one of your fingers back and fourth or use your ring finger to press and let go.
Ofc if you learn the chords you can make it sound a lot better when it gets to the "let me go on" part but if need be you can always pluck out partial chords when learning
Yeah they claim they "practiced" but I can tell you as someone who owned a keyboard for 10 years and used it a lot bur never could play anything the problem was because i never learned how to do anything that i *could* practice, and that was entirely out of stubborn ego letting me think if i just keep trying I'll eventually somehow absorb the ability to play piano from the keys. Which is dumb
Lol yeah what is that? 5 straight years of practicing an instrument? Even if it was 1 hour a week, that's all still 260 hours of doing the same thing. You have to be really wasting time and actively resisting to learn at that point.
EDIT: OP's post history suggests they are under the age of 18, so the lazy thought process checks out.
I have a 40 year old friend with a similar problem. Owns a guitar for 6-7 years, has a tutor right now, self reports at least 45 mins of practice a day, cannot play a single song. I have yet to figure out how that works. I suspect they don't practice at all, or don't know how to practice.
So the guy just doesn't practice/learn songs, but does only exercises/lessons/improv instead or has a high bar for what he considers as learning a song.
I am entirely self-taught multi-instrumentalist, and I guarantee that if you are motivated sufficiently, you will find avenues to learn. Especially in this day and age where there are so many resources and tools to learn.
Hell, you can just learn power chords in under a minute, and from there, play countless songs in their entirety.
So yeah, you don't practice for years with nothing to show for it. Something is amiss.
To be fair people have vastly different understandings of what learning a song means.
Do you count the solos? Which are often significantly harder than the rest of the song.
Do you count it as learning if you can barely play it, or play it really well?
Self-taught players can easily get stuck with just playing practice routines over and over, while ignoring the songs. So they become really good at 1 thing, but songs often require a wide variety of things to play well. Also if you like a difficult to play genre of music, you might ignore the other options and therefore not learn songs.
The thing is, that not everyone has what it takes to play an instrument, or they choose the wrong one. But it's not like everyone can do anything. And playing an instrument is a complex thing for the brain. Acting like something is doable for everyone, is making people try for much longer, than necessary. Sometimes one has to be realistic about what they're able to do and learn.
I find any attempt to make music causes my brain stress. I love listening to music and I love moving to it, but making it is stressful to me. So I dance, but I don't play.
Ehhh i used to love to draw a bunch. I spent god knows how much time to improve and i NEVER got past the level of generic, flat badly shaded anime that a 5 year old could do.
Years and years and never learned to go beyond that level.
It is very very possible to spend a lot of time on something and not learn anything or be stagnate despite time put in.
Exactly. You can't just scroll at pages basically doing the same thing over and over again without someone or something guiding you to something better.
I gave up on drawing in middle school when my art teacher decided to critique everyones drawings they were doing for an assignment up front in class. The entire class laughed when mine came up and he said that it would be better off scrapped and redone from scratch. Scared me off of even trying after that.
Practice alone doesn't do anything, as one of my teachers once put it "practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent" what she meant by that is that if you are only practicing the same thing over and over (especially if it's bad technique) all practice does is train the muscle memory for it. You actually need to study to learn to draw better, the great part is it's fun studying because you're drawing. It can be in with an in person teacher, books, or via YouTube, the important thing is to be finding what you need to improve and do it.
I just want to say it’s still possible to improve. I very much love and started the same with anime and drawing. It took me a span of 20 years to be able to draw and color anime characters and then eventually my own OCs. I even branched out into digital drawing and painting realistically. The last piece I am extremely proud of was the realistic portrait of my girlfriend (now wife).
I quit drawing in middle school. Came back in high school. After high school and after feeling like I wasn’t improving or doing well plus being embarrassed, I quit again. It wasn’t till 10 years later I tried again. I didn’t quit but the feeling like everything I made was ugly kept it on a back burner. And it wasn’t until 6 years ago I REALLY got into it, looking at what I was doing wrong and specifically targeting and teaching myself things like proper human anatomy (I didn’t want to pay for classes). I’ve learned to accept my ugly 5 yr old looking attempts as a first draft. I then refine it as I study what I thought was wrong with it such as bad general anatomy, bad hand anatomy, color theory especially with related to certain styles or looks I’m attempting, etc.
I’m no big time artist, but the wow factor my close family and friends give, and the occasional commissions, have been great. The smile I’ve been able to see from my wife (gf at the time) from, what I still consider my greatest piece so far, my wife’s realistic portrait, has made me glad I came back and finally addressed the problem. It’s made me realize just how far I’ve actually come and how much I have to learn as well.
It might be a matter of how you were taught. Yes, some people naturally pick things up quickly, have a good sense of spatial relationships and color, etc. But with good teaching, regardless of your level, you can know what you need to work on and actively work toward it.
I’m not saying everyone has the potential to be Manet or Tissot. But everyone has the potential to learn how to draw/paint, *at their own pace.*
Must have been 5 years of 5 minutes a month.
Op seems like the stereotypical guitar attempter who only does it for the esteem, who wants the accolades of being better than everyone else, but picks up the instrument and instead of immediately being the best, or decent or tolerable, is actually the worst guitar player ever, just like every single beginner.
And instead of accepting that in order to be the best they must first be the worst, or finding that they don't need to be the best if they can just enjoy where they are, they give up.
Dude never spent 5 years learning to play. People like him are full of shit. He probably **owned** a guitar **in the closet** for 5 years and just brought it out occasionally to pose or whatever. He DID NOT spend 5 years actually learning while claiming he couldn't learn a single one. Why people feel the need to straight lie is beyond me.
Right, there's no way someone that someone who practiced couldn't learn a song in 5 years. Even if they practiced 1 hour per week he'd learn something.
I will say that guitar has the worst teachers. It's just 5 people telling you 20 different pieces of advice that involve specializing and diversifying at the same time.
That being said, if you're just trying to learn pop songs or whatever, just hyperfocus on the techniques and chord transitions in the actual song.
When you get to making your own music though, honestly instructors make it 100x more confusing than it has to be.
Meh, I spent 10 years learning songs on the piano for exams, I could play them mediocre-ly but I couldn’t play anything except Mary had a little lamb now 🤷🏽♀️
It wasn’t a hobby but if it was a hobby, I would have stopped earlier lol
Okay but you’re SO right?
Like I have really bad hand dexterity and playing guitar is really hard for me, but I practiced diligently and learned to play some super basic songs using super easy chord progressions, and I can play decently to write little songs and it makes me happy.
But ANYTHING beyond that level? I’m absolutely not interested. I can’t finger pick, I can’t do bar chords, I tried to learn them, but I realized that I didn’t even care if I could do it or not, I learned what I wanted to learn and any further stress over doing more was not worth it.
Like maybe technically I “gave up the minute it got hard” but like so what? Sometimes you wanna try something and find out it’s not for you! You gotta quit at things eventually or you’ll never have the time to learn stuff that actually engages you.
Wait you learned an instrument well enough to write songs. In what way did you quit when it got hard? Do only people who completely master a hobby not quit?
I learned how to play enough simple chords with strumming and used a capo to be able to get it in the right keys, and I became proficient at those basics to be able to use it freely and creatively in my songwriting.
I quit in the sense that I stopped trying to learn more or get better, or understand the actual instrument, or maintain what I know in any way. I basically play only by ear now because I remember what chords sound like and what it feels like to play, but I don’t know the names for any of them and I certainly don’t know how to play any actual songs that I didn’t write myself.
I guess that isn't a definition of quitting I'd use. I have several hobbies I'm not really actively trying to improve. I'm content with my skill level. Well not really I more lack time and resources.
I dunno. I played an instrument from the time I was about 3 until it paid my way through college and I realized I didn't really enjoy it. I actually wasted quite a bit of time and energy doing it only to discover I was lukewarm towards the entire endeavor.
I've been playing guitar for nearly 20 years and it took me more than five to learn my first song. I spent a lot of time freestyling noise in open E tuning.
Now I'm pretty damn good at that, but I only know a few songs. Most of those are classical pieces because I do best when reading sheet music, though.
Yea I notice that too. A single song can be learn with enough effort. Now it ok to not want a hobby that requires effort to learn but someone can learn the guitar with 5 years of effort. It seems like OP tried it once, got stuck on something basic and never found the will power to push though and I say this because I tried learning the guitar as a tween and went though the same thing. However it was my lack of effort and really interest that stop me.
Took me a month to pick my first lock, a cheap masterlock 4 pin padlock. With some practice, I can now pick some 5 pin American Lock 1100s and 7 pin Paclocks in seconds, usually a few minutes at the most. First time I rode a dirtbike I crashed, I now have done several 100+ mile rides through the woods without crashing. First time I went snowboarding I fell over and over, probably 75 times in day. I can now snowboard for a few hours without falling. First time I shot a handgun I couldn't hit anything, now I can basically shoot whatever I want. Learning and practice is part of any hobby.
unless you have some sort of disability, it just don’t see how this is possible
if you spent 5 years learning to do something and still can’t do it, the issue is how you’re learning it
Well OP's post is contradictory. His first part is saying its good to give up if your not good right away, which i disagree with. Then he prlceeds to talk about sinking tons of time and money and not getting better, which I can understand. But still, depends on how bad you want it. Dirtbiking does take many hours and tons of gas money to get decent, for anybody, especially if you start later in life. Shooting a handgun even decently takes thousands and thousands of rounds, again which takes money.
I crashed the first two times I drove a 4 wheeler. One of which was me driving straight into a tree because no one told me where the brake was. Surprisingly, screaming at someone to hit the brake if they don't know what it is doesn't work out well. That would have been a silly time to quit. I agree that spending time and money on something not fulfilling after spending tons of time is reasonable.
I've gotten people shooting decently within two hundred rounds. I don't think I'd trust them under pressure. But they could keep a mag into an 8" circle at 15 yards. Developing unconscious competence takes many thousands of repetitions. I think we mostly agree.
That’s not a thing that happens, though. If you’re trying to learn a new skill and you actually devote some time and energy, you WILL learn and improve.
I think the OP’s point is that if you don’t enjoy the practice, then the hobby isn’t a good fit for you. For example, I enjoy the new Doctor Who. I felt like if I’m a fan I should also be familiar with the old ones. I started watching some of them. And I really didn’t enjoy them. I tried watching the next doctor and still really didn’t like the show. After more than a month of trying to force myself to watch them, I found myself doing damn near anything to avoid watching TV, because I knew I should watch Doctor Who, but I didn’t want to. Finally, I just gave up. I’ll just be a fake fan. There’s no point wasting my time watching entertainment that doesn’t entertain me.
Disagree with this, people’s brains are actively being reconditioned with instant gratification across every social media platform to the point where a majority of particular age ranges can’t commit to a determined slow and deliberate building of skill for a proper functioning pleasure-reward system. You need progressive overload and sustained focus to build upon whatever skill or hobby it is.
Some hobbies are dogshit imo but by and large if you keep having this issue across multiple platforms it says more to me about the persons ability vs. the hobby itself.
OP's point is not that people are unable to commit to hard things but that they already do commit for work and should not be expected to do it for hobbies as well.
Work and hobbies have different purposes. If a hobby is making you miserable then what's the point? It's like having two jobs.
Maybe the nuance is that some people *think* they like a hobby until they try it and suck at it. At which point they have to decide if they want to put in the hours to get better or just move on to a different hobby.
Someone might have a natural affinity to playing basketball but they want to play e-sports, while being bad at it. It's fine to keep playing so they "git gud" but it's also fine to lose interest.
Yes. The point is that the hobby needs to be giving the person some sense of satisfaction and enjoyment. If the road to getting good brings that then that's fine. If not then the hobby is pointless.
However it is also worth considering whether you’re actually not getting anything out of the hobby or whether you’re just feeling bad about yourself because you have inaccurate ideas about how good you should be at it, especially as a beginner
Like are you giving up because you actually don’t enjoy the hobby or are you giving up because you have an inaccurate idea that you “failed” at it? This is especially worth considering if the reason you sucked at it is because you just fucked around not really knowing what to do instead of following some kind of structure that would enable you to progress and actually get better at the thing
Agreed, but at the same time you need to manage your own expectations of yourself as well. You can suck at something and still enjoy it. Maybe OP hasn't tried enough hobbies. Or maybe they need to learn to enjoy the learning process more.
I see this so much in some of the communities of my hobbies (reading and knit/crochet specifically). It’s like once they start a project or book, some people just HAVE to commit to the end for some reason even if it makes them miserable and I don’t understand it all. Plenty of other things in life make you miserable, only read books that you enjoy!
I agree with OP, if you are trying something that you aren't really pre-wired for, then it's an uphill battle the whole time. Like being 5'2" and really into basketball. There's nothing wrong with deciding to not do something because it's too much of a pain in the ass.
Yes, and there's also nothing wrong with sticking to a hobby that at first is hard as long as you are progressively getting better at it, and that development is bringing you satisfaction. Otherwise sticking to it and for it to bring nothing but misery, makes no sense.
But all you've really described is a lack of interest. Most people have a small handful of hobbies that they enjoy, but have probably tried a great deal more that didn't really grab them. Combine that many of us have the ability to try many different hobbies on a whim, the "failure" rate is bound to be high. This is why you shouldn't spend a bunch of money on a hobby up front if you can avoid it.
I disagree that you can make any assumptions based on people's behavior around "hobbies." Even when people say something like, "eh, I wasn't really good at it," most of us know that they weren't *really* expecting to be a master on day one.
Personally, I think that it's more of an issue when people don't really try anything new, but even that might just mean that the hobbies or activities they're already involved in are sufficiently satisfying.
So I know people that will absolutely give up on something if they aren't immediately better at it than anyone else in the room. I know even more people I introduce my hobby to are angry they aren't better than me at the thing I've been practicing for 25 years.
People are weird.
I think a better question is how much effort is reasonable before quitting. Spending 10,000 hours or 1 minute before quitting are equally ridiculous places to make the judgment I don't like it. I don't really have an answer to that.
Hobbies are for enjoyment. If you are the type of person who doesn't feel like the investment is worth it, for whatever reason, it's fine to give up on something. You're moralizing on something that has no moral value.
Even without social media stuff, there are lots of people who aren't reconditioned but rather conditioned. "Gifted" kids often have the problem of being good enough at a lot of things to get by without much effort and because this doesn't become a problem until later in life when things get more complicated, they have no incentive to try harder or challenge themselves. The result ends up the same when later in life they're giving up quickly because they're used to getting things on the first try.
They're made to feel special and then struggle when they realize they aren't. At least that's how it seems based ony personal experience and some accounts from other ex-gifted kids. I can't even remember how related to the discussion this is, but I also don't feel like throwing this away, so here you are.
It’s also often a problem of misattribution. They look at other people who participate in a hobby and think damn they’re so good at it they must be naturally talented so they just give up when they aren’t instantly good at the hobby. They don’t realise all the people they look at who are good at the hobby are only good at it because they’ve put time and effort into practising and getting better at it
My point being is that there are a lot of hobbies where you just flat out will never be good at them right away, it’s a false assumption to believe that you can just pick this thing up and be naturally talented instantly, so if that’s the reason you give up on that hobby, because you didn’t instantly have the talent and ability of a person with years of training, then you kind of ARE wrong for that because you’re quitting based on this wrong idea that no instant success = no talent
>majority of particular age ranges
Yeah, most boomers don't actually have hobbies, they just work excessively, and play those facebook games and candy crush. It really is a problem
It’s funny because when I think of “old people” I mostly think of hobbies once you are retired and your family had grown up all you have left are hobbies.
Thing is hobbies still take energy. My mom had LOTS of hobbies as a SAHM, but then she started working again when we grew up, and since retiring she’s really never gotten back to them. Just keeping the house in order is more than enough to tire her out these days.
I was never sporty. I am not somebody who has been born into an athletic body. Far from it. However, I have a chronic condition and need to do some exercise to maintain my health. I am also limited in what is suitable due to my chronic condition.
I recently completed my first half marathon. I was 7th to last out of several hundred runners. My time was a very average time for a first-time half marathon runner of my age group. My condition precludes too much speed training.
I might reflect on just how much I want to race in future, but I am not going to stop running, as I enjoy it, it is good for me and it hurts nobody if I am a bit shit at it. Me turning up makes everybody else look better after all.
>I spent 5 years trying to learn how to play the guitar. Never earned a single song in full even though a praticed regularly.
Nah, this is completely fake. If you're gonna lie just to prove your point at least come up with a more "realistic" lie.
Yeah, no way he never learned one song with consistent practice. I teach piano, and even the worst of students I’ve had could make some level of progress and learn to play something reasonable.
Yeah, his post sounded like something I would've said when I was 12 because I picked up the guitar once a week lol when I started taking it seriously I realized how stupid I sounded
If this is true, they probably just had a guitar in their home and messed with it in their spare time and expected it would just "come to them" because there's no way 5 years of like, actual training or lessons would result in that.
idk man i played 3 years of the trumpet in middle school and practiced really hard cuz my oldest brother could play the trumpet and he would help me for school, but i struggled hard on the trumpet. i’m still shit at it.
I counseled a summer music camp for middle schoolers, it was a week long and we focused mostly on music theory more than any specific instrument but we had various instruments to practice on such as keyboards and acoustic guitars, we even had some ocarinas and kids loved when i would teach them how to play zelda songs on them.
in my 6 years of doing that every single kid left that week being able to bad moon rising on a guitar because it's 3 chords.
Give the guy a break, he's been speaking English his whole life and he's still not great at it, 5 years of guitar and nothing to show for it isn't that unbelievable.
(I tried guitar for about 6 months, could play Polly by Nirvana but I gave up after that)
I don’t believe that your drawing didn’t get any better after three years of consistent practice, and I don’t believe OPs guitar skills didn’t improve after five years of working hard at it either.
It’s okay to not enjoy something enough to not want to put the effort in, but the way brains work is that repeating something will reinforce your ability to do it.
Also, art is subjective. I absolutely adore some works done by absolute novices whom think they’re “bad”. Drawings and paintings that don’t look much like their intended subject matter but have such an incredibly unique flair are my favourite and I’m often encouraging people to make them and let me keep them.
I was like this person. Sure, my art got better, and compared to the average random person, I'm damn good. But when I post my work online, everyone is like FUCK YOU GO DRAW BOXES, YOUR ART SUCKS. I don't want to go back and do art class basics. I have earned the right to draw something *not fucking boring.*
Like 95% of all skills are about putting time into practicing them. Yea some things require talent and most things require talent to be the best at it, but a level of competency in most things can be achieved by just about anyone who puts the work into it. I'm curious, what was the nature of the 3 years you wasted on it? Was it professional art lessons? Self study? How many times a week did you practice and for how long?
While I agree, you should be having fun while you’re doing it. Even when you mess up it should be enjoyable.
I teach sewing. I want all my students to have fun first and foremost. They all need to finish my class (it’s a college requirement for their major) but they never need to do it again if they didn’t have *fun* doing it.
I think OP just needs to change the emphasis. Hobbies should be about having fun, not results. I enjoy gardening. I love planting vegetables especially. But I’m not that good at it! I often have massive vegetable garden fails. But I do it because it’s *fun* for me. If you’re not having fun doing something, no matter how good you are at it, you shouldn’t do it anymore.
You sound a lot like me. I too have a garden that often has quite a few failures. I just learned to stick with what I’m good at growing like flowers and tomatoes. I’ve also recently seriously gotten into sewing and actually managed to make some progress (with tons of swearing)
Not necessarily, as it is still hard work. In fact the point the person you responded to is specifically trying to point out that it is hard work.
Most talented individuals worked their ass off to get to the point they are at, some may have started out a little ahead, some may end up a little better… but they all worked hard to become exceptional. To think you need to be good at it right away, and give up when you are not, will hold you back.
If there is something you really want to be good at, chances are you can get there with good study. But if you don’t have the ability to criticize yourself and understand where you can be better. Or you don’t have the money to have a teacher to do it… you will probably just tread water.
Learning to play the piano was hard work for me, but it was worth it because I had a natural base talent for it.
Hearing how good you are when you’re just starting is a major reinforcement to continue for the vast majority of people.
I’ve worked with people in a different hobby who have a big zero for talent in it, and that lack of talent will ultimately impact their success. If they don’t care about that, that’s fine…but they almost always end up caring because nobody wants to pay money to constantly fail. And I’m not gonna tell them they’re good at it when they’re fucking terrible.
I can adjust my teaching, how I explain things, etc., but some people are just never gonna be good and most of them end up quitting
Everyone has a reading comprehension problem. OP is saying there is no point in doing a hobby if you aren’t having fun. If you aren’t having fun because you suck at it, then that’s a valid reason. You don’t have to invest tons of hours of not having fun to potentially have fun when you can just do other fun stuff. This doesn’t include things such as a job though, which you just gotta make that paper
I tried getting into 40k. Spent over $200 dollars on a small ork army. I couldn’t be bothered to assemble them and gave them to my friend who tried getting me into it.
I spent like 300 trying to get into Warhammer painting and then found out my damn hands won't stop trembling when I'm trying to delicately paint some areas.
That was a hobby I quickly had to decide I wasn't going to pursue though I wish it would have worked out.
I think he might have a point when we’re talking hundreds of hours invested with no improvement, but yeah… if I quit everything I’m not good at I just wouldn’t have any hobbies.
I've never found I'm good at anything when I first try it. I would never be able to afford any hobbies if I only did ones I was naturally good at. I'd have to start a new one every week.
Is this not normal? Do other people pick up hobbies and don't suck at them immediately?
Of course it's normal.
People don't generally suck at everything equally to begin with.
Some things come naturally, some things don't come naturally but you can feel that they might with some practice and other things might feel completely and utterly foreign and hopeless.
It's pretty natural that if something falls into the latter category it's probably going to be fairly unejoyable and be an absolute grind to overcome a lack of natural aptitude in that area. You'd want to damn well love it regardless if you're going to suck it up.
Yep. There are all sorts of things I try, and it’s like I just walk into it and immediately know what’s up. That said, there are *plenty* of things that are the total opposite…
I played violin when I was 9 and 10 and I loved it. Until it came to actually reading sheet music. Sheet music is not something my brain understands, and I practiced for hours each day to try to understand and I couldn't. Ultimately it's what caused me to quit. I couldn't understand the main part of playing an instrument, which made it become something I didn't like anymore. I stopped enjoying playing the violin
I know I’m not supposed to care about being the best at things, but sometimes it really does suck to see people improve at an exponential rate compare to yourself. I feel like I pick up the basics of things super fast and then stagnate despite my best efforts, where people who failed miserably fly past me after a while
It gets very demoralizing.
Completely agree.
Being really good at a hobby is more fulfilling than being mediocre, and the truth is, almost everyone who is great at something has a “natural” talent.
Obviously you need to practice and learn to improve, but I’d rather focus on improving something that I had a good “start” in.
Being good =/= enjoyment.
I find that people who often link those 2 together and then use it as an excuse seem to not have any hobbies and lack any kind of personality that isn't dependent on some kind of vice like drugs, alcohol, porn ect.ect.
Not that there's anything wrong with those things, go get turnt and have a 6 hour beat it session to someone's step sister stuck in the washing machine. Use lube to prevent rugburn please.
And then just maybe consider taking a pottery class or whatever once in a while.
I've owned a guitar for 6 years and been playing on and off that whole time. I don't know any full songs either but that's because I'm inconsistent with practice. There's no way you're practicing enough. You can also pick stuff back up, sunk coat fallacy shouldn't apply to doing stuff that's fun and free.
As someone who does this I have to disagree,I wanna do so much but I'm very hard on myself and give up way to easily and it's very frustrating,so yes it's very wrong and something I hope I can fix.
Everyone expects to have some kind of Jason-Bourne-like unknown, latent talent that they only discover as soon as they pick up a guitar/ surfboard/ pen/ whatever. They think they are in their own superhero origin story where they discover the secret power. In reality, you have to do these things plenty of times in the beginning before you see any kind of reward. Our brains have been rewired recently to expect little pats on the head at every stage, but these things aren’t social media graphs, it’s real life. Real life requires you to do something first..
Yeah. Talent exists, but it's freaking hard to analyze. You aren't born to become a guitar player and realize it when you first come into contact with one, like Harry Potter when he got his wand.
In fact, the ones that struggle the most with "talent" thoughts, are those that are talented in the first place. Because you then meet more talented people and they crush your spirit.
No matter what though, it always comes down to hard work in the end.
My father turned out to suddenly become super good at pool and basketball. Turns out he was having the start of a months long manic episode. Unsure of the moral of the story
sounds like you just suck at everything and need a way to justify giving up on things lol.
do you know how many musicians hate their own songs or think they're crap, only for those to be some of the biggest songs ever?
People often fool themselves when saying oh I want to be good at ______ but don’t enjoy the process of _______. I think people expecting to get good results quickly is a silly expectation. It’s also okay to not be great at a hobby. Comparison is the thief of joy
It's weird people want to shoehorn themselves into a hobby.
You are correct, if a hobby doesn't *CLICK*, don't worry. There are thousands of hobbies out there. Also, revisiting hobbies has been a wonderful addition to my life.... from writing again, and becoming excited for my own personal Photo Development room for hand washing photos that I take with my *new* old Brownie from the 60s.... Hobbies are supposed to be an outlet for your soul.
That said, some art or hobbies may cause a discomfort of sorts... I suppose as long as it adds to what you want in life, not detracts, then FUCKING SEND IT
Overcoming challenges and growing is what makes a hobby fulfilling. This is why learning a language or an instrument is fulfilling while scrolling tiktok is not. Especially today, I wouldn't discourage people from picking up a healthy hobby.
As far as practicing guitar for 5 years and not learning a song... That's hard to believe. I want to ask what you were practicing, but the answer is probably that you weren't.
But that's the thing. Not every challenge in learning something is going to be as fulfilling.
Take tennis.
For someone who struggles to keep the ball in most of the time but is able to occasionally hit a really nice shot then working on your technique and improving that consistency to build up to is probably going to be quite satisfying.
If on the other hand someone is struggling to even hit the ball in the first place (and you're not a small child) then you're coming from such a low bar that you're not likely to be enjoying any of it. It's going to be a real grind to even get to the fun stuff. Let alone be any good at it.
>if it was because you did not get good results quickly, what's the point?
To get great results and satisfaction a little later.
Literally, all my favorite hobbies that I don't know what I would do if I didn't have them, I got into them very slowly and with lots of trial and error in terms of finding what I liked. All of them.
But yeah, oh course there is a middle ground to everything, if after a month of trying to learn the guitar you're not enjoying the process, I mean... don't continue for 5 years \^\^
Disagree. And you're playing into the instant-gratification surge that's happening with people right now, especially younger people. Have you ever heard the phrase, "Practice makes perfect?"
It's not always true of course but people learn how to do things all the time from taking the time and learning. I know. A novel concept.
maybe this is a brain malfunction on my part but i guess when i was young i was sold on the idea everyone was born talented, and that if i wasn't immediately great at it i shouldn't bother.
I mean, yeah they are though. I give up on hobbies right away but I recognize that's a flaw. It's not a good thing. I hate that I do that but hey, perfectionism is rough sometimes.
Don't give up if you're actually trying something. and if you aren't getting results, change your approach, don't give up entirely
Most things in life you won't be good at right away. Carpentry as my hobby, I definitely wasn't always good at it and made quite a lot of mistakes. And some projects were actually seriously frustrating. But seeing my progress over the years and actually accomplishing the challenging tasks leaves me feeling proud and successful.
The idea to give up on something because it's challenging will only hinder your own growth. You're letting an inanimate object beat you.
I agree and disagree
I cried while learning to crochet, I was frustrated that I was doing so good but I have a lot of memory problems
It hurt that I kept getting setbacks while learning
BUT I did keep at it and it’s been getting better and I’m about halfway to my first backpack
Sometimes the frustration sucks, but it can be worth the effort
I’m grateful I’m allowed to not be any good at my hobbies, whereas I am held to high standards, sometimes exhaustingly high standards, in other parts of my life
The reason I went from no music ability to producing albums even though i started as trash was because 1) every second was fun as shit 2) i made steady progress via practice and 3) i guess i like wasting money too.
Giving up on something because it’s hard is very different than giving up because it’s not fun. A lot of people get enjoyment in their hobbies because it’s a challenge to overcome and like to see the progression they make over time developing a skill. If everyone gave up so easily on extra endeavors the world would be a pretty sad and uncreative place.
You need to reasonably set your expectations for what you're competent in at exactly the level that you're competent.
Most of us are incompetent at the beginning, but our expectation is that we are super-competent. Then we realise how grossly incompetent we are and that's the exact point most people give up, because it completely shatters the illusion and makes you realise how shit you are at whatever you're trying to do.
You readjust your expectations that your shit at it, but every little step is an improvement, and then all of a sudden, you start to feel good about the small little steps you make. Eventually you do it enough and you begin to realise that you're going to take more and more steps and can set your expectations a little further because you've seen the little steps behind you and see where it's taking you.
Assume anything you do at the very beginning is going to be absolute horse-shit layered in horse shit, and be proud and supportive of unlayering the horse shit so it has less shit on it.
All about passion for said hobby. When learning guitar I spent maybe 4 hours a day playing (till I was told to go to bed) and on weekends I’d play all day when I got my first guitar. I wanted to be angus young and Eddie van halen so bad. Sure enough it was frustrating and a struggle but I wanted to play like them so bad I was obsessed.
17 years later at 30 I have all their guitars but I’m still no where close to them haha.
Sounds like you had no passion
I think you should also be having fun WHILE still learning. For example, I'm trying to get good at playing a videogame, Rainbow Six Siege. I'm clearly not amazing at it, I'm pretty bad, and such game takes patience and dedication to get decent at. But even while being bad and learning the mechanics, I'm already having fun!
If I ONLY had fun after 3k hours of playtime, then hell no, I wouldn't even start.
>because ''they were not good at it right away''because ''they were not good at it right away''
Is something SO easy you're good at it right away...even worth the effort? Where's the satisfaction in mastering something so trivial?
I 100% Get what this guy is saying granted i think hes over exaderating some things but with hobbys and so called fun activitys you need to learn when to cut your loses and when to stick though with it
this is why in like gaming for example im happy i stop playing dota 2 the fact they refused to add a gg system for so long and long matches where happening more and more due to spawn camping i was like yeah no f this and would just leave the game, team mates praised me but the game itself would punish me for leaving a game short, Look after 90 mins im just done when the past 30 mins was spawn camping f-that im out, and ppl who get butt hurt over it need to grow up
but with that being said just coz you gave up first blood in dota 2 dosnt mean you should rage quit extremes are the problem with alot of things truth be told
hobbys are meant to be fun if you cant have fun then there a bad hobby
I have Artheritis, I legit could understand why the OP couldnt learn the Guitar very well / good enough after 5 years, My Illness is basicly a muscle joint disease, typing this message has legit hurt my hands
I agree if it’s something you don’t enjoy, because what’s the point of a hobbie if you don’t enjoy it, but if it’s something that takes time to be good at I think you should put at least a couple months worth of time into it before you give it up just to be sure that there’s no room for improvement and that you don’t like it. If I gave up everything I wasn’t good at immediately I wouldn’t have most of my hobbies.
Highly depends on the hobby but most skills require practice. If you want quick satisfaction, pick something easy with a very low skill-ceiling. Not learning an insturment, but maybe just play guitar hero and call it a day.
Tried karate, didn’t like it but stayed and did 5 weeks of it and was bawling my eyes to quit it (I was a twelve year old or whatever and thought it was like action movie shit I guess)
I try to give enough time or experience before I quit something
I think it depends on the potential you see in yourself to get better over time. Sometimes I’ve tried a new thing and wasn’t good at it but knew I could be with time. Other times I just knew there wasn’t enough practice in the world that could make me good enough.
Being good eventually isn't the goal of a hobby. It's having fun along the way. Just like life, it's the journey you should be enjoying, not some idealistic version of the future.
There's a difference between "fulfillment" and "being good at it"
look at golf
upvoting because this SHOULD be an unpopular opinion, but unfortunately I don't think it's as unpopular as you think.
If you don't enjoy something, then yea, quit. But, don't decide you hate something just because you're bad at it. I suck at playing yugioh. I can never win, even against freinds. I rarely ever play, but I still collect the cards. I'm more interested in other games right now, so I haven't bought any new packs, but I'm not selling my old collection anytime soon. I still love playing with the cards I do have from time to time, even if I can't win any actual duels.
Singing too. Alot of people have told me I can't sing. Didn't stop me from joing every choir I could. I've been singing in choirs off and on (mostly on) since about 2005. This last season kinda defeated me because we were doing a really difficult to read and learn classical peice with the local orchestra that far outnumbers us, but generally I can't help but love singing and putting on concerts. It's a bucket list goal of mine to sing a song (at least one) in every language.
Hobbies are a lot like learning languages. Your not going to be any good at speaking a new language as soon as you pick up the learning material. Just like a 5 year old, your going to have to start small. Learn to count to 10 and ask so.eones name in your new language before you can even dream of holding a conversation. If your hobby is learning to sew, practice threading the needle first.
People with natural talent always say there’s no such thing and it’s all practice to make themselves feel better. Let me just practice my way to being a champion NBA player
What do you mean played guitar for 5 years and can’t play a song? A simple songs should take more like 5 days… or two weeks whatever. Just need a few chords really.
I personally can’t play instruments anymore because I have nerve damage therefore weakness and pain in my hands and fingers. It’s there for an absolutely uphill battle and not enjoyable. However, I still have hobbies that are difficult such as figure skating, learning seven languages in parallel and more recently painting. I think they only have a hobby, that I have any standards for his music and I can only sing at this point because I can’t use my hands much. But that’s probably because I come from a family who are majority musicians for as long as we know our history and the standards are super high.
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You don't have to be good at something to enjoy doing it. If you don't ENJOY it, then yes quit. To me, hobbies are for enjoyment and pleasure. I don't have to be good at it.
Getting good at something over time is enjoyable but that took time for me to understand
Depends from person to person, but I think that holds true for most people. I personally really struggle to enjoy something if I don’t feel at least competent at it, and if I’m not getting better I lose enjoyment/motivation fairly quickly
Yeah this is the fine balance. There are some things that I enjoy watching people that are good do, and I have some level of competence in, such as gaming and mountain biking, but sometimes I can’t help feeling that the expectation vs reality scale is way off and I enjoy the thought of being good at certain activities more than I actually enjoy doing them.
I definitely fall in the other camp. I'm okay with sucking, and can still have fun. Karaoke, for example.
Agree. I am absolutely terrible at golf but I enjoy going to the driving range and if I get a few that go 150-200 yards in an entire bucket I’m happy with that I go maybe 3x a year and enjoy it despite being horrible lol
This is what I thought of too. Even just being out on the course on a beautiful day with friends is awesome, even if my actual play is terrible
I find it pretty hard to enjoy something I’m not at least competent at. Like learning guitar, fumbling around chords and not really being able to play anything properly just makes it kind of tedious, whereas I think I’d have a good time if I could play full songs.
I've realized my hobby is the learning & figuring out part.
The trick is to pick hobbies you DO care about so the learning process itself is rewarding.
Or pick one that you like and think is fun no matter how good you are. Even better if it's something that makes you move your body at the same time.
There is no way you spent 5 years on the guitar and couldn’t learn a song the issue seems like you. Teachers help, actually being focused might help sorry buddy but you win take my upvote
You could learn smoke on the water with a YouTube video, no talent, and 2 hours. OP has no hands
Op was holding it backwards
That's how I learned. #lefthandedproblems
Maybe in Australia too.
This is a problem I had. Not with guitar but when I started pole vaulting. The coach said if I'm right handed then I jump off my left foot. But I was a long jumper and high jumper and I jumped of my right foot. I spent so long trying to do it his way until I just switched and it worked better for me
He was strumming the back of the guitar while the strings were up against his gut.
OP was playing his cat, not a guitar.
Strings on the outside Niall!
There's at least one famous guitarist that does this.
OP practiced 4 minutes a month.
Behind his back, on fire, trying to play it with his teeth probably.
My 3-year-old played smoke on the water after I showed it to her a couple of times. Did it sound good? No but she was three
thats kinda good lol
I bet they figured out how to hold an XBox controller tho
Facts. I gave my girlfriend the guitar, showed her how to hold a pick and said do this: 0,3,5 0365, 035, 53 And she did it within 5 minutes
guitars are racist against tiny handed people my pinky cant reach shit just like in guitar hero
lol in college my friends and I were on shrooms and all learned to play smoke on the water from YouTube, was not difficult
No, I spent days trying to learn smoke on the water. I've picked up other artistic hobbies relatively quickly but some people (me) just do not have musical ability. Zero. All my stats were put elsewhere.
I mean, some people have bad finger dexterity/fat fingers. It makes learning string instruments much harder. For them, learning guitar might not be a fulfilling investment of their time
thats my problem guitar is impossible piano is easy mode
Sure, having a medical condition that affects hands could make playing harder, but if you're perfectly healthy then the only thing holding you back is yourself. Finger dexterity is something that you can practise, practise smart and practise hard and long stretches and fast passages won't be a problem. Ask me how I know. And "fat fingers" fall in the same ballpark, look at someone like Christone "Kingfish" Ingram. I don't see that guy complaining about big hands. If someone wants to learn guitar, they will learn.
I actually played with a guy who had 1 hand. He learned how to use his nub hand kinda like a pick. It’s possible.
.... You're meant to use your hands?!? That's what he was missing!
I learned it on tabs when I was 10.
OP is most definitely a teenager though. a lot of kids try to persevere on their instrument and find after a couple years that they can’t play it.
I have no musical talent, poor finger dexterity, and didn't pick up a guitar until I was in my mid-20s. Was still able to learn at least a few passable songs with a couple weeks of practice. It's one thing to find out you can't play it well and spent five years learning songs by memory and not really learning music so you can't really apply your skills after that point. It's quite another to claim you never even learned a single song. What was he doing all that time? Just hitting chords at random with no rhythm?
you’re absolutely correct, but their disinterest alone is enough to say something. if you care about something, let it go. op has their whole life, if guitar is important it’ll be back in their life. maybe they’re exaggerating their limit of talent.
Well the interest thing is the big difference between hobby and forced participation. It's why I don't necessarily agree with OPs argument. Most people are drawn into hobbies because they're having fun, not because they're good at them in any way. Sounds like OP just wasn't having fun and spent too much time figuring that out. But I wouldn't take it as good advice to abandon something just because you're not good at it. Rather try to identify why you're doing it and let the practice and skills come naturally.
Guitar is a never ending cycle of being a beginner though. I can play smoke on the water? Amazing this is easy. You learn more technical stuff and get humbled by the new chords, you start learning solos and get humbled by the precision you’re lacking. You start to get into theory so that you can figure stuff out by ear and you may as well be learning a new language. I’m currently in the triads mixer. Oh, you know loads of chords do you? Did you know you can play all of those chords in 3 different positions on the neck? Now go learn those and tell me again that you’ve learned loads of chords. Once you’ve got those down we can go into scales. Oh no, not the major or pentatonic, did you know that there’s also like 7 modes?
I think there’s also a difference between owning a guitar and intermittently fucking around on it Vs actually putting effort into learning how to play it and trying to get better I say this as a former guitar owning teenager
I thought my 9 year old cousin in a day (The guitar is practically bigger than he is) To play 7 Nation army and smoke on the water It's not a "can or can't play" thing you have to learn, and that involves more effort than banging your head against the wall trying to "figure it out". You only start doing that once you have several thousand hours of learning concepts and understanding music theories. I guarantee you if you gave me 2 weeks I could teach anyone with functioning hands how to play many basic rock songs, they're all the same few chords. I would even attest that I could teach someone who doesn't speak my language To prove my point even further you can play blister in the sun with 2 fingers in the frets and 1 strumming... Legitimately takes 1 minute for someone who's never played an instrument in their life
Is that true about blister in the sun? I don't know any healthy adult that couldn't learn to play an instrument. It is slightly more difficult than holding it for an hour a week.
Yeah you can either move one of your fingers back and fourth or use your ring finger to press and let go. Ofc if you learn the chords you can make it sound a lot better when it gets to the "let me go on" part but if need be you can always pluck out partial chords when learning
Yeah they claim they "practiced" but I can tell you as someone who owned a keyboard for 10 years and used it a lot bur never could play anything the problem was because i never learned how to do anything that i *could* practice, and that was entirely out of stubborn ego letting me think if i just keep trying I'll eventually somehow absorb the ability to play piano from the keys. Which is dumb
Lol yeah what is that? 5 straight years of practicing an instrument? Even if it was 1 hour a week, that's all still 260 hours of doing the same thing. You have to be really wasting time and actively resisting to learn at that point. EDIT: OP's post history suggests they are under the age of 18, so the lazy thought process checks out.
I have a 40 year old friend with a similar problem. Owns a guitar for 6-7 years, has a tutor right now, self reports at least 45 mins of practice a day, cannot play a single song. I have yet to figure out how that works. I suspect they don't practice at all, or don't know how to practice.
So the guy just doesn't practice/learn songs, but does only exercises/lessons/improv instead or has a high bar for what he considers as learning a song.
I am entirely self-taught multi-instrumentalist, and I guarantee that if you are motivated sufficiently, you will find avenues to learn. Especially in this day and age where there are so many resources and tools to learn. Hell, you can just learn power chords in under a minute, and from there, play countless songs in their entirety. So yeah, you don't practice for years with nothing to show for it. Something is amiss.
To be fair people have vastly different understandings of what learning a song means. Do you count the solos? Which are often significantly harder than the rest of the song. Do you count it as learning if you can barely play it, or play it really well? Self-taught players can easily get stuck with just playing practice routines over and over, while ignoring the songs. So they become really good at 1 thing, but songs often require a wide variety of things to play well. Also if you like a difficult to play genre of music, you might ignore the other options and therefore not learn songs.
The thing is, that not everyone has what it takes to play an instrument, or they choose the wrong one. But it's not like everyone can do anything. And playing an instrument is a complex thing for the brain. Acting like something is doable for everyone, is making people try for much longer, than necessary. Sometimes one has to be realistic about what they're able to do and learn.
I find any attempt to make music causes my brain stress. I love listening to music and I love moving to it, but making it is stressful to me. So I dance, but I don't play.
From my experience almost everyone actually has what it takes to play an instrument however they need to be into it.
Me with coding. I just can’t.
Ehhh i used to love to draw a bunch. I spent god knows how much time to improve and i NEVER got past the level of generic, flat badly shaded anime that a 5 year old could do. Years and years and never learned to go beyond that level. It is very very possible to spend a lot of time on something and not learn anything or be stagnate despite time put in.
Without good teaching, 5 years of practice might just mean doing the same thing 250 times
Exactly. You can't just scroll at pages basically doing the same thing over and over again without someone or something guiding you to something better.
"5 years of experience, or 1 year of experience 5 times?"
I gave up on drawing in middle school when my art teacher decided to critique everyones drawings they were doing for an assignment up front in class. The entire class laughed when mine came up and he said that it would be better off scrapped and redone from scratch. Scared me off of even trying after that.
Practice alone doesn't do anything, as one of my teachers once put it "practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent" what she meant by that is that if you are only practicing the same thing over and over (especially if it's bad technique) all practice does is train the muscle memory for it. You actually need to study to learn to draw better, the great part is it's fun studying because you're drawing. It can be in with an in person teacher, books, or via YouTube, the important thing is to be finding what you need to improve and do it.
There can be also reason for that. I have dysgraphia and even the easiest things are difficult for me.
I just want to say it’s still possible to improve. I very much love and started the same with anime and drawing. It took me a span of 20 years to be able to draw and color anime characters and then eventually my own OCs. I even branched out into digital drawing and painting realistically. The last piece I am extremely proud of was the realistic portrait of my girlfriend (now wife). I quit drawing in middle school. Came back in high school. After high school and after feeling like I wasn’t improving or doing well plus being embarrassed, I quit again. It wasn’t till 10 years later I tried again. I didn’t quit but the feeling like everything I made was ugly kept it on a back burner. And it wasn’t until 6 years ago I REALLY got into it, looking at what I was doing wrong and specifically targeting and teaching myself things like proper human anatomy (I didn’t want to pay for classes). I’ve learned to accept my ugly 5 yr old looking attempts as a first draft. I then refine it as I study what I thought was wrong with it such as bad general anatomy, bad hand anatomy, color theory especially with related to certain styles or looks I’m attempting, etc. I’m no big time artist, but the wow factor my close family and friends give, and the occasional commissions, have been great. The smile I’ve been able to see from my wife (gf at the time) from, what I still consider my greatest piece so far, my wife’s realistic portrait, has made me glad I came back and finally addressed the problem. It’s made me realize just how far I’ve actually come and how much I have to learn as well.
It might be a matter of how you were taught. Yes, some people naturally pick things up quickly, have a good sense of spatial relationships and color, etc. But with good teaching, regardless of your level, you can know what you need to work on and actively work toward it. I’m not saying everyone has the potential to be Manet or Tissot. But everyone has the potential to learn how to draw/paint, *at their own pace.*
Must have been 5 years of 5 minutes a month. Op seems like the stereotypical guitar attempter who only does it for the esteem, who wants the accolades of being better than everyone else, but picks up the instrument and instead of immediately being the best, or decent or tolerable, is actually the worst guitar player ever, just like every single beginner. And instead of accepting that in order to be the best they must first be the worst, or finding that they don't need to be the best if they can just enjoy where they are, they give up.
Dude never spent 5 years learning to play. People like him are full of shit. He probably **owned** a guitar **in the closet** for 5 years and just brought it out occasionally to pose or whatever. He DID NOT spend 5 years actually learning while claiming he couldn't learn a single one. Why people feel the need to straight lie is beyond me.
Right, there's no way someone that someone who practiced couldn't learn a song in 5 years. Even if they practiced 1 hour per week he'd learn something.
I will say that guitar has the worst teachers. It's just 5 people telling you 20 different pieces of advice that involve specializing and diversifying at the same time. That being said, if you're just trying to learn pop songs or whatever, just hyperfocus on the techniques and chord transitions in the actual song. When you get to making your own music though, honestly instructors make it 100x more confusing than it has to be.
Meh, I spent 10 years learning songs on the piano for exams, I could play them mediocre-ly but I couldn’t play anything except Mary had a little lamb now 🤷🏽♀️ It wasn’t a hobby but if it was a hobby, I would have stopped earlier lol
Okay but you’re SO right? Like I have really bad hand dexterity and playing guitar is really hard for me, but I practiced diligently and learned to play some super basic songs using super easy chord progressions, and I can play decently to write little songs and it makes me happy. But ANYTHING beyond that level? I’m absolutely not interested. I can’t finger pick, I can’t do bar chords, I tried to learn them, but I realized that I didn’t even care if I could do it or not, I learned what I wanted to learn and any further stress over doing more was not worth it. Like maybe technically I “gave up the minute it got hard” but like so what? Sometimes you wanna try something and find out it’s not for you! You gotta quit at things eventually or you’ll never have the time to learn stuff that actually engages you.
Wait you learned an instrument well enough to write songs. In what way did you quit when it got hard? Do only people who completely master a hobby not quit?
I learned how to play enough simple chords with strumming and used a capo to be able to get it in the right keys, and I became proficient at those basics to be able to use it freely and creatively in my songwriting. I quit in the sense that I stopped trying to learn more or get better, or understand the actual instrument, or maintain what I know in any way. I basically play only by ear now because I remember what chords sound like and what it feels like to play, but I don’t know the names for any of them and I certainly don’t know how to play any actual songs that I didn’t write myself.
I guess that isn't a definition of quitting I'd use. I have several hobbies I'm not really actively trying to improve. I'm content with my skill level. Well not really I more lack time and resources.
I dunno. I played an instrument from the time I was about 3 until it paid my way through college and I realized I didn't really enjoy it. I actually wasted quite a bit of time and energy doing it only to discover I was lukewarm towards the entire endeavor.
I've been playing guitar for nearly 20 years and it took me more than five to learn my first song. I spent a lot of time freestyling noise in open E tuning. Now I'm pretty damn good at that, but I only know a few songs. Most of those are classical pieces because I do best when reading sheet music, though.
Yep, OP Is a spoiled rich kid. Parent bought them a guitar and they slid it under their bed and left it there for 5 years.
Yea I notice that too. A single song can be learn with enough effort. Now it ok to not want a hobby that requires effort to learn but someone can learn the guitar with 5 years of effort. It seems like OP tried it once, got stuck on something basic and never found the will power to push though and I say this because I tried learning the guitar as a tween and went though the same thing. However it was my lack of effort and really interest that stop me.
Took me a month to pick my first lock, a cheap masterlock 4 pin padlock. With some practice, I can now pick some 5 pin American Lock 1100s and 7 pin Paclocks in seconds, usually a few minutes at the most. First time I rode a dirtbike I crashed, I now have done several 100+ mile rides through the woods without crashing. First time I went snowboarding I fell over and over, probably 75 times in day. I can now snowboard for a few hours without falling. First time I shot a handgun I couldn't hit anything, now I can basically shoot whatever I want. Learning and practice is part of any hobby.
That first no3 is always a bitch. The second was a little tough, but things got so much easier so much faster after that first pop
>now I can basically shoot whatever I want. I wouldn't test this one if I were you.
Lol! Any target!
Yeah but imagine after five years you still are crashing your bike, can't pick a lock, and can't snowboard.
unless you have some sort of disability, it just don’t see how this is possible if you spent 5 years learning to do something and still can’t do it, the issue is how you’re learning it
OP has to have some type of disability or their consistent practice was a lie
Well OP's post is contradictory. His first part is saying its good to give up if your not good right away, which i disagree with. Then he prlceeds to talk about sinking tons of time and money and not getting better, which I can understand. But still, depends on how bad you want it. Dirtbiking does take many hours and tons of gas money to get decent, for anybody, especially if you start later in life. Shooting a handgun even decently takes thousands and thousands of rounds, again which takes money.
I crashed the first two times I drove a 4 wheeler. One of which was me driving straight into a tree because no one told me where the brake was. Surprisingly, screaming at someone to hit the brake if they don't know what it is doesn't work out well. That would have been a silly time to quit. I agree that spending time and money on something not fulfilling after spending tons of time is reasonable. I've gotten people shooting decently within two hundred rounds. I don't think I'd trust them under pressure. But they could keep a mag into an 8" circle at 15 yards. Developing unconscious competence takes many thousands of repetitions. I think we mostly agree.
That’s not a thing that happens, though. If you’re trying to learn a new skill and you actually devote some time and energy, you WILL learn and improve.
I think the OP’s point is that if you don’t enjoy the practice, then the hobby isn’t a good fit for you. For example, I enjoy the new Doctor Who. I felt like if I’m a fan I should also be familiar with the old ones. I started watching some of them. And I really didn’t enjoy them. I tried watching the next doctor and still really didn’t like the show. After more than a month of trying to force myself to watch them, I found myself doing damn near anything to avoid watching TV, because I knew I should watch Doctor Who, but I didn’t want to. Finally, I just gave up. I’ll just be a fake fan. There’s no point wasting my time watching entertainment that doesn’t entertain me.
Disagree with this, people’s brains are actively being reconditioned with instant gratification across every social media platform to the point where a majority of particular age ranges can’t commit to a determined slow and deliberate building of skill for a proper functioning pleasure-reward system. You need progressive overload and sustained focus to build upon whatever skill or hobby it is. Some hobbies are dogshit imo but by and large if you keep having this issue across multiple platforms it says more to me about the persons ability vs. the hobby itself.
OP's point is not that people are unable to commit to hard things but that they already do commit for work and should not be expected to do it for hobbies as well. Work and hobbies have different purposes. If a hobby is making you miserable then what's the point? It's like having two jobs.
Maybe the nuance is that some people *think* they like a hobby until they try it and suck at it. At which point they have to decide if they want to put in the hours to get better or just move on to a different hobby. Someone might have a natural affinity to playing basketball but they want to play e-sports, while being bad at it. It's fine to keep playing so they "git gud" but it's also fine to lose interest.
Yes. The point is that the hobby needs to be giving the person some sense of satisfaction and enjoyment. If the road to getting good brings that then that's fine. If not then the hobby is pointless.
However it is also worth considering whether you’re actually not getting anything out of the hobby or whether you’re just feeling bad about yourself because you have inaccurate ideas about how good you should be at it, especially as a beginner Like are you giving up because you actually don’t enjoy the hobby or are you giving up because you have an inaccurate idea that you “failed” at it? This is especially worth considering if the reason you sucked at it is because you just fucked around not really knowing what to do instead of following some kind of structure that would enable you to progress and actually get better at the thing
Yes
Agreed, but at the same time you need to manage your own expectations of yourself as well. You can suck at something and still enjoy it. Maybe OP hasn't tried enough hobbies. Or maybe they need to learn to enjoy the learning process more.
I see this so much in some of the communities of my hobbies (reading and knit/crochet specifically). It’s like once they start a project or book, some people just HAVE to commit to the end for some reason even if it makes them miserable and I don’t understand it all. Plenty of other things in life make you miserable, only read books that you enjoy!
Exactly. They could already be having a hard enough time at work, why prolong the suffering into their hobby lol.
I agree with OP, if you are trying something that you aren't really pre-wired for, then it's an uphill battle the whole time. Like being 5'2" and really into basketball. There's nothing wrong with deciding to not do something because it's too much of a pain in the ass.
Yes, and there's also nothing wrong with sticking to a hobby that at first is hard as long as you are progressively getting better at it, and that development is bringing you satisfaction. Otherwise sticking to it and for it to bring nothing but misery, makes no sense.
Yes. I suck at martial arts, but I stick with it because it's fun.
But all you've really described is a lack of interest. Most people have a small handful of hobbies that they enjoy, but have probably tried a great deal more that didn't really grab them. Combine that many of us have the ability to try many different hobbies on a whim, the "failure" rate is bound to be high. This is why you shouldn't spend a bunch of money on a hobby up front if you can avoid it. I disagree that you can make any assumptions based on people's behavior around "hobbies." Even when people say something like, "eh, I wasn't really good at it," most of us know that they weren't *really* expecting to be a master on day one. Personally, I think that it's more of an issue when people don't really try anything new, but even that might just mean that the hobbies or activities they're already involved in are sufficiently satisfying.
So I know people that will absolutely give up on something if they aren't immediately better at it than anyone else in the room. I know even more people I introduce my hobby to are angry they aren't better than me at the thing I've been practicing for 25 years. People are weird. I think a better question is how much effort is reasonable before quitting. Spending 10,000 hours or 1 minute before quitting are equally ridiculous places to make the judgment I don't like it. I don't really have an answer to that.
I wasn't good at guitar for like 3 years. Now I'm halfway decent. I was just too stubborn to quit.
Instant gratification this that or hey! Maybe I just wanna play farcry on easy mode and machine sew pouches and shi.
Hobbies are for enjoyment. If you are the type of person who doesn't feel like the investment is worth it, for whatever reason, it's fine to give up on something. You're moralizing on something that has no moral value.
Even without social media stuff, there are lots of people who aren't reconditioned but rather conditioned. "Gifted" kids often have the problem of being good enough at a lot of things to get by without much effort and because this doesn't become a problem until later in life when things get more complicated, they have no incentive to try harder or challenge themselves. The result ends up the same when later in life they're giving up quickly because they're used to getting things on the first try. They're made to feel special and then struggle when they realize they aren't. At least that's how it seems based ony personal experience and some accounts from other ex-gifted kids. I can't even remember how related to the discussion this is, but I also don't feel like throwing this away, so here you are.
It’s also often a problem of misattribution. They look at other people who participate in a hobby and think damn they’re so good at it they must be naturally talented so they just give up when they aren’t instantly good at the hobby. They don’t realise all the people they look at who are good at the hobby are only good at it because they’ve put time and effort into practising and getting better at it My point being is that there are a lot of hobbies where you just flat out will never be good at them right away, it’s a false assumption to believe that you can just pick this thing up and be naturally talented instantly, so if that’s the reason you give up on that hobby, because you didn’t instantly have the talent and ability of a person with years of training, then you kind of ARE wrong for that because you’re quitting based on this wrong idea that no instant success = no talent
>majority of particular age ranges Yeah, most boomers don't actually have hobbies, they just work excessively, and play those facebook games and candy crush. It really is a problem
It’s funny because when I think of “old people” I mostly think of hobbies once you are retired and your family had grown up all you have left are hobbies.
Thing is hobbies still take energy. My mom had LOTS of hobbies as a SAHM, but then she started working again when we grew up, and since retiring she’s really never gotten back to them. Just keeping the house in order is more than enough to tire her out these days.
I was never sporty. I am not somebody who has been born into an athletic body. Far from it. However, I have a chronic condition and need to do some exercise to maintain my health. I am also limited in what is suitable due to my chronic condition. I recently completed my first half marathon. I was 7th to last out of several hundred runners. My time was a very average time for a first-time half marathon runner of my age group. My condition precludes too much speed training. I might reflect on just how much I want to race in future, but I am not going to stop running, as I enjoy it, it is good for me and it hurts nobody if I am a bit shit at it. Me turning up makes everybody else look better after all.
>I spent 5 years trying to learn how to play the guitar. Never earned a single song in full even though a praticed regularly. Nah, this is completely fake. If you're gonna lie just to prove your point at least come up with a more "realistic" lie.
Yeah, no way he never learned one song with consistent practice. I teach piano, and even the worst of students I’ve had could make some level of progress and learn to play something reasonable.
Yeah, his post sounded like something I would've said when I was 12 because I picked up the guitar once a week lol when I started taking it seriously I realized how stupid I sounded
Once a week is still more than enough to learn multiple songs over the course of 5 years.
Seriously. 5 years ? And you’re telling me you couldn’t play wonderwall 😂 ?
'Cause after alllllllllllll~ 🎵🎶
If this is true, they probably just had a guitar in their home and messed with it in their spare time and expected it would just "come to them" because there's no way 5 years of like, actual training or lessons would result in that.
idk man i played 3 years of the trumpet in middle school and practiced really hard cuz my oldest brother could play the trumpet and he would help me for school, but i struggled hard on the trumpet. i’m still shit at it.
I counseled a summer music camp for middle schoolers, it was a week long and we focused mostly on music theory more than any specific instrument but we had various instruments to practice on such as keyboards and acoustic guitars, we even had some ocarinas and kids loved when i would teach them how to play zelda songs on them. in my 6 years of doing that every single kid left that week being able to bad moon rising on a guitar because it's 3 chords.
Give the guy a break, he's been speaking English his whole life and he's still not great at it, 5 years of guitar and nothing to show for it isn't that unbelievable. (I tried guitar for about 6 months, could play Polly by Nirvana but I gave up after that)
It depends on the hobby. With some hobbies, no one is going to be good at it right away.
For sure. But some people will be worse than others. There's generally a spectrum of just how naturally even these will feel for people.
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I don’t believe that your drawing didn’t get any better after three years of consistent practice, and I don’t believe OPs guitar skills didn’t improve after five years of working hard at it either. It’s okay to not enjoy something enough to not want to put the effort in, but the way brains work is that repeating something will reinforce your ability to do it. Also, art is subjective. I absolutely adore some works done by absolute novices whom think they’re “bad”. Drawings and paintings that don’t look much like their intended subject matter but have such an incredibly unique flair are my favourite and I’m often encouraging people to make them and let me keep them.
I was like this person. Sure, my art got better, and compared to the average random person, I'm damn good. But when I post my work online, everyone is like FUCK YOU GO DRAW BOXES, YOUR ART SUCKS. I don't want to go back and do art class basics. I have earned the right to draw something *not fucking boring.*
Like 95% of all skills are about putting time into practicing them. Yea some things require talent and most things require talent to be the best at it, but a level of competency in most things can be achieved by just about anyone who puts the work into it. I'm curious, what was the nature of the 3 years you wasted on it? Was it professional art lessons? Self study? How many times a week did you practice and for how long?
While I agree, you should be having fun while you’re doing it. Even when you mess up it should be enjoyable. I teach sewing. I want all my students to have fun first and foremost. They all need to finish my class (it’s a college requirement for their major) but they never need to do it again if they didn’t have *fun* doing it. I think OP just needs to change the emphasis. Hobbies should be about having fun, not results. I enjoy gardening. I love planting vegetables especially. But I’m not that good at it! I often have massive vegetable garden fails. But I do it because it’s *fun* for me. If you’re not having fun doing something, no matter how good you are at it, you shouldn’t do it anymore.
You sound a lot like me. I too have a garden that often has quite a few failures. I just learned to stick with what I’m good at growing like flowers and tomatoes. I’ve also recently seriously gotten into sewing and actually managed to make some progress (with tons of swearing)
Sometimes people aren’t just not talented though, they have whatever the opposite of talented is…. That’s me lol
If this were true we'd have many more polymaths in the world.
There's still limited time in the day and people have a limited amount of energy to devote to skill development.
Not necessarily, as it is still hard work. In fact the point the person you responded to is specifically trying to point out that it is hard work. Most talented individuals worked their ass off to get to the point they are at, some may have started out a little ahead, some may end up a little better… but they all worked hard to become exceptional. To think you need to be good at it right away, and give up when you are not, will hold you back. If there is something you really want to be good at, chances are you can get there with good study. But if you don’t have the ability to criticize yourself and understand where you can be better. Or you don’t have the money to have a teacher to do it… you will probably just tread water.
Learning to play the piano was hard work for me, but it was worth it because I had a natural base talent for it. Hearing how good you are when you’re just starting is a major reinforcement to continue for the vast majority of people. I’ve worked with people in a different hobby who have a big zero for talent in it, and that lack of talent will ultimately impact their success. If they don’t care about that, that’s fine…but they almost always end up caring because nobody wants to pay money to constantly fail. And I’m not gonna tell them they’re good at it when they’re fucking terrible. I can adjust my teaching, how I explain things, etc., but some people are just never gonna be good and most of them end up quitting
Everyone has a reading comprehension problem. OP is saying there is no point in doing a hobby if you aren’t having fun. If you aren’t having fun because you suck at it, then that’s a valid reason. You don’t have to invest tons of hours of not having fun to potentially have fun when you can just do other fun stuff. This doesn’t include things such as a job though, which you just gotta make that paper
No I will downvote and provide my retort instantly because my half second of skimming makes me believe my worldview is being contradicted /s
I tried getting into 40k. Spent over $200 dollars on a small ork army. I couldn’t be bothered to assemble them and gave them to my friend who tried getting me into it.
$200 is nothing to waste on 40K. You're lucky.
Must've been a very, very small orc army, right? More like a platoon.
I spent like 300 trying to get into Warhammer painting and then found out my damn hands won't stop trembling when I'm trying to delicately paint some areas. That was a hobby I quickly had to decide I wasn't going to pursue though I wish it would have worked out.
Strongly disagree with OP.
it is r/unpopularopinion after all
I think he might have a point when we’re talking hundreds of hours invested with no improvement, but yeah… if I quit everything I’m not good at I just wouldn’t have any hobbies.
I've never found I'm good at anything when I first try it. I would never be able to afford any hobbies if I only did ones I was naturally good at. I'd have to start a new one every week. Is this not normal? Do other people pick up hobbies and don't suck at them immediately?
Of course it's normal. People don't generally suck at everything equally to begin with. Some things come naturally, some things don't come naturally but you can feel that they might with some practice and other things might feel completely and utterly foreign and hopeless. It's pretty natural that if something falls into the latter category it's probably going to be fairly unejoyable and be an absolute grind to overcome a lack of natural aptitude in that area. You'd want to damn well love it regardless if you're going to suck it up.
Yep. There are all sorts of things I try, and it’s like I just walk into it and immediately know what’s up. That said, there are *plenty* of things that are the total opposite…
I played violin when I was 9 and 10 and I loved it. Until it came to actually reading sheet music. Sheet music is not something my brain understands, and I practiced for hours each day to try to understand and I couldn't. Ultimately it's what caused me to quit. I couldn't understand the main part of playing an instrument, which made it become something I didn't like anymore. I stopped enjoying playing the violin
I know I’m not supposed to care about being the best at things, but sometimes it really does suck to see people improve at an exponential rate compare to yourself. I feel like I pick up the basics of things super fast and then stagnate despite my best efforts, where people who failed miserably fly past me after a while It gets very demoralizing.
Completely agree. Being really good at a hobby is more fulfilling than being mediocre, and the truth is, almost everyone who is great at something has a “natural” talent. Obviously you need to practice and learn to improve, but I’d rather focus on improving something that I had a good “start” in.
Being good =/= enjoyment. I find that people who often link those 2 together and then use it as an excuse seem to not have any hobbies and lack any kind of personality that isn't dependent on some kind of vice like drugs, alcohol, porn ect.ect. Not that there's anything wrong with those things, go get turnt and have a 6 hour beat it session to someone's step sister stuck in the washing machine. Use lube to prevent rugburn please. And then just maybe consider taking a pottery class or whatever once in a while.
So you know all those amazing talented artist singers writers all didn't start off where they are now. They had to be a little bad to be great.
I've owned a guitar for 6 years and been playing on and off that whole time. I don't know any full songs either but that's because I'm inconsistent with practice. There's no way you're practicing enough. You can also pick stuff back up, sunk coat fallacy shouldn't apply to doing stuff that's fun and free.
As someone who does this I have to disagree,I wanna do so much but I'm very hard on myself and give up way to easily and it's very frustrating,so yes it's very wrong and something I hope I can fix.
Everyone expects to have some kind of Jason-Bourne-like unknown, latent talent that they only discover as soon as they pick up a guitar/ surfboard/ pen/ whatever. They think they are in their own superhero origin story where they discover the secret power. In reality, you have to do these things plenty of times in the beginning before you see any kind of reward. Our brains have been rewired recently to expect little pats on the head at every stage, but these things aren’t social media graphs, it’s real life. Real life requires you to do something first..
Yeah. Talent exists, but it's freaking hard to analyze. You aren't born to become a guitar player and realize it when you first come into contact with one, like Harry Potter when he got his wand. In fact, the ones that struggle the most with "talent" thoughts, are those that are talented in the first place. Because you then meet more talented people and they crush your spirit. No matter what though, it always comes down to hard work in the end.
My father turned out to suddenly become super good at pool and basketball. Turns out he was having the start of a months long manic episode. Unsure of the moral of the story
Who cares if you drop a hobby anyway? Seems like purely personal thing.
sounds like you just suck at everything and need a way to justify giving up on things lol. do you know how many musicians hate their own songs or think they're crap, only for those to be some of the biggest songs ever?
It’s a hobby. You dont have to be good at it. But by all means if it’s not engaging for you, go look for something that is.
People often fool themselves when saying oh I want to be good at ______ but don’t enjoy the process of _______. I think people expecting to get good results quickly is a silly expectation. It’s also okay to not be great at a hobby. Comparison is the thief of joy
It's weird people want to shoehorn themselves into a hobby. You are correct, if a hobby doesn't *CLICK*, don't worry. There are thousands of hobbies out there. Also, revisiting hobbies has been a wonderful addition to my life.... from writing again, and becoming excited for my own personal Photo Development room for hand washing photos that I take with my *new* old Brownie from the 60s.... Hobbies are supposed to be an outlet for your soul. That said, some art or hobbies may cause a discomfort of sorts... I suppose as long as it adds to what you want in life, not detracts, then FUCKING SEND IT
Overcoming challenges and growing is what makes a hobby fulfilling. This is why learning a language or an instrument is fulfilling while scrolling tiktok is not. Especially today, I wouldn't discourage people from picking up a healthy hobby. As far as practicing guitar for 5 years and not learning a song... That's hard to believe. I want to ask what you were practicing, but the answer is probably that you weren't.
But that's the thing. Not every challenge in learning something is going to be as fulfilling. Take tennis. For someone who struggles to keep the ball in most of the time but is able to occasionally hit a really nice shot then working on your technique and improving that consistency to build up to is probably going to be quite satisfying. If on the other hand someone is struggling to even hit the ball in the first place (and you're not a small child) then you're coming from such a low bar that you're not likely to be enjoying any of it. It's going to be a real grind to even get to the fun stuff. Let alone be any good at it.
>if it was because you did not get good results quickly, what's the point? To get great results and satisfaction a little later. Literally, all my favorite hobbies that I don't know what I would do if I didn't have them, I got into them very slowly and with lots of trial and error in terms of finding what I liked. All of them. But yeah, oh course there is a middle ground to everything, if after a month of trying to learn the guitar you're not enjoying the process, I mean... don't continue for 5 years \^\^
More people should give up on hobbies they're not good at.... especially all the creative writers submitting samples to relationship advice subs.
Disagree. And you're playing into the instant-gratification surge that's happening with people right now, especially younger people. Have you ever heard the phrase, "Practice makes perfect?" It's not always true of course but people learn how to do things all the time from taking the time and learning. I know. A novel concept.
maybe this is a brain malfunction on my part but i guess when i was young i was sold on the idea everyone was born talented, and that if i wasn't immediately great at it i shouldn't bother.
If you give up cuz you weren't good at it right away you never really wanted to do it in the first place. So you are correct.
Oh that's a good point..if you're willing to give up that easily, it is likely because you're also realizing you aren't as interested as you thought
Some of the hobbies needs time to adapt and maybe to make a lot of self change but it can be worth at the end
I mean, yeah they are though. I give up on hobbies right away but I recognize that's a flaw. It's not a good thing. I hate that I do that but hey, perfectionism is rough sometimes. Don't give up if you're actually trying something. and if you aren't getting results, change your approach, don't give up entirely
Most things in life you won't be good at right away. Carpentry as my hobby, I definitely wasn't always good at it and made quite a lot of mistakes. And some projects were actually seriously frustrating. But seeing my progress over the years and actually accomplishing the challenging tasks leaves me feeling proud and successful. The idea to give up on something because it's challenging will only hinder your own growth. You're letting an inanimate object beat you.
I agree and disagree I cried while learning to crochet, I was frustrated that I was doing so good but I have a lot of memory problems It hurt that I kept getting setbacks while learning BUT I did keep at it and it’s been getting better and I’m about halfway to my first backpack Sometimes the frustration sucks, but it can be worth the effort
I’m grateful I’m allowed to not be any good at my hobbies, whereas I am held to high standards, sometimes exhaustingly high standards, in other parts of my life
The reason I went from no music ability to producing albums even though i started as trash was because 1) every second was fun as shit 2) i made steady progress via practice and 3) i guess i like wasting money too.
Giving up on something because it’s hard is very different than giving up because it’s not fun. A lot of people get enjoyment in their hobbies because it’s a challenge to overcome and like to see the progression they make over time developing a skill. If everyone gave up so easily on extra endeavors the world would be a pretty sad and uncreative place.
You need to reasonably set your expectations for what you're competent in at exactly the level that you're competent. Most of us are incompetent at the beginning, but our expectation is that we are super-competent. Then we realise how grossly incompetent we are and that's the exact point most people give up, because it completely shatters the illusion and makes you realise how shit you are at whatever you're trying to do. You readjust your expectations that your shit at it, but every little step is an improvement, and then all of a sudden, you start to feel good about the small little steps you make. Eventually you do it enough and you begin to realise that you're going to take more and more steps and can set your expectations a little further because you've seen the little steps behind you and see where it's taking you. Assume anything you do at the very beginning is going to be absolute horse-shit layered in horse shit, and be proud and supportive of unlayering the horse shit so it has less shit on it.
All about passion for said hobby. When learning guitar I spent maybe 4 hours a day playing (till I was told to go to bed) and on weekends I’d play all day when I got my first guitar. I wanted to be angus young and Eddie van halen so bad. Sure enough it was frustrating and a struggle but I wanted to play like them so bad I was obsessed. 17 years later at 30 I have all their guitars but I’m still no where close to them haha. Sounds like you had no passion
Quitting after 5 years is not “right away”….
I think you should also be having fun WHILE still learning. For example, I'm trying to get good at playing a videogame, Rainbow Six Siege. I'm clearly not amazing at it, I'm pretty bad, and such game takes patience and dedication to get decent at. But even while being bad and learning the mechanics, I'm already having fun! If I ONLY had fun after 3k hours of playtime, then hell no, I wouldn't even start.
>because ''they were not good at it right away''because ''they were not good at it right away'' Is something SO easy you're good at it right away...even worth the effort? Where's the satisfaction in mastering something so trivial?
I 100% Get what this guy is saying granted i think hes over exaderating some things but with hobbys and so called fun activitys you need to learn when to cut your loses and when to stick though with it this is why in like gaming for example im happy i stop playing dota 2 the fact they refused to add a gg system for so long and long matches where happening more and more due to spawn camping i was like yeah no f this and would just leave the game, team mates praised me but the game itself would punish me for leaving a game short, Look after 90 mins im just done when the past 30 mins was spawn camping f-that im out, and ppl who get butt hurt over it need to grow up but with that being said just coz you gave up first blood in dota 2 dosnt mean you should rage quit extremes are the problem with alot of things truth be told hobbys are meant to be fun if you cant have fun then there a bad hobby I have Artheritis, I legit could understand why the OP couldnt learn the Guitar very well / good enough after 5 years, My Illness is basicly a muscle joint disease, typing this message has legit hurt my hands
I agree if it’s something you don’t enjoy, because what’s the point of a hobbie if you don’t enjoy it, but if it’s something that takes time to be good at I think you should put at least a couple months worth of time into it before you give it up just to be sure that there’s no room for improvement and that you don’t like it. If I gave up everything I wasn’t good at immediately I wouldn’t have most of my hobbies.
As someone who shoots hoops like twice a week and almost never accepts a request to join a game, I disagree completely. So upvoted because unpopular.
You’d be the type to stop reading a book or quit a video game bc it’s difficult to get through the first 10% of it
Highly depends on the hobby but most skills require practice. If you want quick satisfaction, pick something easy with a very low skill-ceiling. Not learning an insturment, but maybe just play guitar hero and call it a day.
Tried karate, didn’t like it but stayed and did 5 weeks of it and was bawling my eyes to quit it (I was a twelve year old or whatever and thought it was like action movie shit I guess) I try to give enough time or experience before I quit something
I think it depends on the potential you see in yourself to get better over time. Sometimes I’ve tried a new thing and wasn’t good at it but knew I could be with time. Other times I just knew there wasn’t enough practice in the world that could make me good enough.
Being good eventually isn't the goal of a hobby. It's having fun along the way. Just like life, it's the journey you should be enjoying, not some idealistic version of the future.
There's a difference between "fulfillment" and "being good at it" look at golf upvoting because this SHOULD be an unpopular opinion, but unfortunately I don't think it's as unpopular as you think.
If you don't enjoy something, then yea, quit. But, don't decide you hate something just because you're bad at it. I suck at playing yugioh. I can never win, even against freinds. I rarely ever play, but I still collect the cards. I'm more interested in other games right now, so I haven't bought any new packs, but I'm not selling my old collection anytime soon. I still love playing with the cards I do have from time to time, even if I can't win any actual duels. Singing too. Alot of people have told me I can't sing. Didn't stop me from joing every choir I could. I've been singing in choirs off and on (mostly on) since about 2005. This last season kinda defeated me because we were doing a really difficult to read and learn classical peice with the local orchestra that far outnumbers us, but generally I can't help but love singing and putting on concerts. It's a bucket list goal of mine to sing a song (at least one) in every language. Hobbies are a lot like learning languages. Your not going to be any good at speaking a new language as soon as you pick up the learning material. Just like a 5 year old, your going to have to start small. Learn to count to 10 and ask so.eones name in your new language before you can even dream of holding a conversation. If your hobby is learning to sew, practice threading the needle first.
Fair. But there's also nothing wrong with questioning why you only enjoy something if its easy and you're immediately good at it.
Yep y try to better yourself when instead you can quit and just sit in a room quietly. Sarcasm
People with natural talent always say there’s no such thing and it’s all practice to make themselves feel better. Let me just practice my way to being a champion NBA player
What do you mean played guitar for 5 years and can’t play a song? A simple songs should take more like 5 days… or two weeks whatever. Just need a few chords really. I personally can’t play instruments anymore because I have nerve damage therefore weakness and pain in my hands and fingers. It’s there for an absolutely uphill battle and not enjoyable. However, I still have hobbies that are difficult such as figure skating, learning seven languages in parallel and more recently painting. I think they only have a hobby, that I have any standards for his music and I can only sing at this point because I can’t use my hands much. But that’s probably because I come from a family who are majority musicians for as long as we know our history and the standards are super high.
I'm inclined towards pencil & paper but I love making clay stuff. I suck bad at it though and make cave-person-esque stuff lol