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Notes -
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.
I have a playlist of BJJ instructional videos miles deep that I want to study to learn more about aspects of BJJ I need to work on. But whenever I have free time to devote to BJJ, I'm at the gym rolling. If it's a night I'm not rolling, it's either because I'm too busy at work, or that I'm doing some other workout or activity, or I'm spending time with my wife; so I don't have the time to watch the instructionals, the entire BJJ time budget is eaten up by going to the gym. So it might be that they have a few hours a week to devote to this goal, and their choices are flashcards or happy hour, and they pick happy hour.
For that matter, if I had a magic trick to just make myself better at Jiu Jitsu, downloaded into my brain Matrix style, I don't know that I'd really want to be an insta-black belt. I'm not sure that would make the hobby more fun for me. I might want to be better than I am, maybe closer to Blue Belt, knowing more about how to handle certain situations I get trapped in, or how to avoid stalling out mid roll, but part of the fun is learning and I'd hate to skip over that.
Relatedly, I could probably get better at rock climbing if I spent time fingerboarding, but I don't. I find it boring and distasteful, and I don't really want to train rock climbing that way. I mostly just want to climb, and if I get better I get better. And some people look at that and say I don't really want to get better, but in my mind I do want to get better, my way; I want to get better, but I want the aesthetic experience more, getting better isn't the end unto itself. Like playing Pokemon and picking a min-maxed well balanced team of 3 good pokemon, vs just catching your favorites and figuring out how to make them work. The latter player wants to beat the game, but not as much as they want to beat the game with Venusaur and Scyther on their team.
That being said, I feel like you're seeing some kind of selection effect here. Most people suck at things, and they keep sucking at them, and they stop doing things they suck at after a while. The 75th percentile person who tries to learn Spanish in the sense of downloading DuoLingo or buying some books never learns any Spanish at all. What makes the people at your meetup group unusual is that they're continuing to put effort in, which probably relates to the low-investment social habit.
Yeah I'm the same with Jiujitsu. I've been doing it long enough that I'm generally able to compete with the vast majority of people, but I've just never particularly enjoyed watching instructionals. Especially filthy leglockers. Would I be better on the aggregate if I mainlined John Danaher, probably, but I just don't care for it and as I'm not realistically on any professional trajectory does it matter?
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