Back when I was in college, I signed up to an Arabic class. I enjoyed it until, a few lessons in, I learned that vowels were not spelled out in written Arabic, so I’d have to know and figure out words based on the context. (1) “What’s the point? I’ll never be good at it,” I remember thinking. I quit soon after. (2)

My beloved, for one, believes in hard work over talent and enjoys practicing skills that he doesn’t (initially) have a knack for. I prefer to get better at things I already do well, but I reckon I’m missing out on potential fun and growth.

Several friends told me—with pride and amusement—how they stick with (and enjoy) things they’re not good at: playing an instrument, drawing, ceramics, knitting. 

My musical friend Soph:

“I suck pretty much at playing guitar and I still play at least once a week. But I’m really over it. It's still fun.”

David, on dropping self-judgment: 

“I hated dancing for years, mostly because I felt ridiculous. One day I realized: mastering a subject makes it lose all its flavor! Trying out a few steps, laughing, learning, that’s what I enjoy.”

Davy, on skateboarding with his children:

“I felt like I was missing out and I have been consistently inspired by my kids’ desire to do new things, their ability to learn quickly and to find the fun in everything. I know I'm never going to be good at it (compared to people who have been doing it for years), but I like the challenge and the satisfaction when you learn something new.”

Enjoying something you’re not good at is counterintuitive. In previous pieces I wrote, I learned that enjoyment and motivation feed off each other: for example, children who enjoy reading become better readers, and vice versa.

Today’s question is: What motivates some people to keep doing things they’re not good at, while others feel self-conscious / like they’re wasting their time? (Asking for a friend…) 

Debunking the Growth Mindset

To try and understand this, I turned to the growth mindset concept, studied and popularized by Stanford psychology researcher Carol Dweck. 

According to Dweck, people with a “fixed mindset” believe success comes from innate, set ability, while those with a “growth mindset” consider that success comes from hard work, and are more persistent and resilient after failure. 

As a parent, I really latched onto this idea and have conscientiously tried to affirm my kids’ efforts over outcomes. I should model failing and persisting at things! I thought. Surely, my perseverant friends have a growth mindset, but I have a fixed mindset and should work on it?

But several academics have warned that the growth mindset isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be (3). Brooke Macnamara, a psychology researcher at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is one of them. 

In two meta-analyses published in 2018—combining results from hundreds and dozens of previous studies, respectively—she and her coauthors found that: 

1. the relationship between growth mindset and academic achievement is “very weak”—so Dweck’s claim that students’ mindset “has profound effects on their motivation, learning, and school achievement” doesn’t hold water.

2. interventions to foster a growth mindset don’t really improve academic achievement and “resources might be better allocated elsewhere”.

In fact, in another 2018 paper, Macnamara and colleagues extended the warning to other popular concepts—like grit, brain training, or deliberate practice—that play up the importance of hard work and the “malleability” of abilities.

“By overemphasizing the influence of environmental factors, we may unintentionally hold individuals accountable for conditions, events, or outcomes beyond their control, including learning disabilities and neurological disorders. […] Likewise, if deliberate practice is the overwhelming determinant of expertise, why should anyone who devotes thousands of hours of practice to a given sport not become an Olympic gold medalist?”

If you want to become, say, Serena Williams and you don’t have a lot of hand-eye coordination or you get injured easily, “maybe you’d be more fulfilled if you found some other endeavor that is a better match for you,” Macnamara suggests. 

It all depends on what you value. Several people I spoke with mentioned wanting to get better, even if they never get really good. “We need hobbies and activities that give us enjoyment and fulfillment where we’re not putting undue pressure on ourselves. It shouldn’t be about your ultimate performance if that’s not what it’s about for you,” says Macnamara. (the emphasis is mine.)

Finding Joy in Mediocrity

For more practical inspiration, I can’t wait to read (It’s Great To) Suck at Something by Karen Rinaldi, a manifesto for “the power of practiced irrelevance” and “busting down the doors of perfectionism, workaholism, cool, and so many other false paeans to true success.”

Rinaldi’s thing is surfing, which she picked up in her 40s:

“I suck at it. But, no matter. I have organized the last twenty years of my life around something that is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, and something in which I will never, ever surpass mediocrity.”

This resonates with the testimonies of my friends about the meditative pleasure of being out in nature or at the skate park, of not taking themselves too seriously, of enjoying time with their friends and family with no self-consciousness.

Rinaldi’s rules include: 

“The thing you suck at has to mean something to you.”

“Do what you love without expectation of gain or reward.”

“The pleasure you find is in your own sucking at something, not in the sucking of others.”

And some of her advice for parents:

“Start small. You don’t need to make a big commitment or investment.”

“The beauty of finding something you can suck at is the freedom from having set goals that can cause anxiety. Appreciating this outlook will help you ease pressure in your kids’ lives too.”

“‘Mama’s going surfing,’ always seemed an absurd thing to tell my kids, which was part of the fun. It always made me giggle—like I was getting away with something. But everything I did afterwards, I did with more generosity in my heart because I had bestowed that generosity on myself.”

I’ll end on this quote from my friend Christophe, whose goal is kite-buggying hundreds of kilometres across Norway with a group of friends next March: 

“I suck at it. We’ve been training for a long time but it’s really hard. It’s really a sh*tty sport: we spend hours waiting for the wind, untangling knots and falling on our faces, but then when we do manage it, we feel like the kings of the world.”

Footnotes

(1) Like you would, in English, be able to tell that “lmp” is lump or limp depending on the sentence it’s used in.

(2) I stuck with Spanish classes, which I am good at.

(3) In 2017, a Huffington Post column quoted education scholar Luke Wood, from San Diego State University, as saying that growth mindset is a “cancerous” idea on its own:

“This myopic perspective perpetuates a cancerous idea that tells students you can succeed as long as you work hard, while depriving them from messages that affirm their abilities or recognize the external challenges such as racism and oppression that often inhibit their ability to do so.”

Tania Rabesandratana is the recipient of the inaugural Attuned Writer Fellowship. To read more of her insights into Intrinsic Motivation in all its many forms—including the intriguing question of whether everyone can afford to care about Intrinsic Motivation when it’s the extrinsic ones that put food on the table—check out ‘Why Would Anyone’ on Substack.

More from Tania Rabesandratana

Tania Rabesandratana

Science Journalist & Attuned Writer Fellow 2021