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Maybe better suited to a Wellness Wednesday post, but I think there's a significant culture war angle here too.
To what extent is the current competency crisis in government, academia, etc. caused by an inability to spend time by oneself and actually put in the work? I've lamented in the past the decline in the social landscape, at least in the United States, but among the social environments that I have been finding recently in Baltimore, there seems to be almost a pathological fear of spending time alone in order to put in the work to actually improve at the thing that we're supposed to be doing together. For example, I've recently been going to a Spanish Happy Hour group at a brewery Thursday evenings after work. There are usually at least a few native speakers there, but aside from them, most people are at a quite elementary stage with the language, and aren't doing anything outside of the happy hour to improve. For some people this makes sense: they're mainly there to socialize not to learn, but for others, like the guy who organizes the group (Alex), the lack of progress is baffling to me. Alex started the group to improve his Spanish so he could communicate better with his girlfriend's family. And yet he seems unable to find the time to practice outside of happy hour (with reading/TV/shows/flashcards). I see the same thing with my new roommate, who is absolutely in love with the country and culture of Spain, and goes to happy hour with me, but won't put in the solitary effort to actually improve at the language. I see the same thing with running: people only going to run clubs to socialize and then expecting to run fast when they don't put in outside mileage on their own time, and even within the philosophy book club that I run where people seem unable to do the 30 pages of reading we discuss every other week.
I see this with myself as well, especially in my PhD. I know what I need to do to be successful: read the papers and do the experiments I have planned, but instead I find myself goofing off with labmates, texting/calling friends while I do busywork, or on this forum posting. Phones may have isolated in some ways, but at the same time, the current media environment seems to have created a constant yearning for companionship that I don't think is conducive to actually growing in competence and skill in areas outside of socialization.
Not quite directly related, but I can say this is how I feel about with my workload these days.
I've been doing this long enough that most of the actual work I have to do is involved, requires concentration, and it can take like 10-15 minutes just to load up all the information and context I need to start to produce a work product. I've got enough experience that I handle any basic inquiries or tasks in like a minute or two, but I want to handle the work that I can really dig into.
Which requires uninterrupted thought. I can't delegate this work, by and large.
I can set aside time on my calendar to do these tasks, but if I 'only' block off 30 minutes, that's barely enough to make meaningful progress, since I get everything up and running and then I can only 'work' for like 15 minutes at at time.
I can block off more time but at that point I'm guaranteed to get interruptions before long and get pulled off task to something else while I'm "in the zone" which ruins the whole effect.
I could set aside time outside of work hours to do it, but by the time I'm home, this feels like such a massive intrusion I generally won't even try unless i have a real looming deadline.
Honestly, I'd really rather be practicing Spanish, or learning how to pilot airplanes, or pick up an instrument or two. But my mental work is most valuable (in terms of how much I get paid) doing this stuff.
Unless someone can gamify it to some extent, lay out an extremely clear path for progression, with periodic rewards and a well-defined end-goal, and some mechanism for accountability, then I'm just less likely to commit to it fully, since I'd have to use discipline to establish a habit and overcome the initial unpleasantness. But so many side activities seem pretty pointless to engage with if they aren't going to drastically increase your status or wealth, even if the skill itself is handy on its own terms.
In part, because everyone is ranked against everyone else, and you know full well you'll never enter the top 10% in most activities, let alone the top 1%, and being the best Xylophonist in your town is no longer sufficient to win social points.
Yes I will.
Top 10% is nothing though. Even top 1% is nothing.
Practically nothing I do recreationally will mean anything to anyone outside of my immediate family, regardless of how good I am.
Thinking that people would care if you were a bit better at some skill is autistic delusion. No-one gives a shit.
Yes, I'm making this precise point.
If becoming decent at a given skill set or activity won't win you many status points, what's the motivation to keep doing it aside from autistic fixation?
I disagreed with the percentiles and that global ranking mattered, not your reasoning for why to engage in activities. I didn't mean to say you are deluded, only that people reasoning about these things often are (like guys at the gym or whatever).
People didn't give a shit about hobbies before the internet either and can't tell a 90th percentile from a 99.9th percentile anyway.
I feel like optimization culture has pushed into hobbies, though. There's way more concern around 'performing' at even casual activities
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