Magic is just one example, but to be more specific with another hobby, I'll use music as an example.
The problem I have with music, is that I can't get it to sound like the other music that I like. And no amount of just "making music" will get me to sound like that.
Instead, what you need to do is actually study other people's music, through analysis, studying genre, watch tutorials etc. And this has helped me significantly. The reason I say that this is because I've had so many epiphanies about how I've been doing it completely "wrong" in regards to what I thought I should have been doing vs what I actually should have been doing.
In addition, if I just focus on making music I get demotivated cause it just doesn't sound like how I want it to.
The problem is that it's really hard to balance between making music and studying music. When you're studying music, it's like that becomes your focus and it consumes you. Which also demotivates you from making music.
But yeah, obviously I'm aware of what the issues are, but I'm not quite sure how to approach it all in a sustainable way.
When you are learning a skill, you have what I call structure learning, free-play, feedback and deliberate practice.
The structure of the skill is the curriculum, so to speak - but the skill itself is an action. When someone is learning music theory, they are really just learning what the structure of the skill is. If they knew the series of actions they needed to take, the goals they needed to set for themselves in practice, and the relationship between those competencies - then they would have no need of theory. The theory informs us of what the structure is.
In most skills and hobbies, you don't need much theory. This is because people have created drills and identified the fundamentals over time. Everything has been organized for you.
That's the structure. Here's the interesting thing - you don't need much structure at all. If the structure is a tree or graph representing the fundamentals you need to master, all you need to know is the next node - the next skill you will focus on.
That's where practice comes in. Practice should be your primary focus, not your secondary focus. Some fraction of that should be "free-play", or curiosity driven exploration & synthesis. You add that in because it's critical for learning, and because it keeps things feeling fresh - but the real value-add is to learn to enjoy the practice. If you "play" at practicing, then you're golden.
Practice though, must be deliberate. You don't just "make music". You have identified something you want to work on, and you attempt it through repetition. You compare your effort to the end-result (using feedback), and you repeat. This loop never ends. If you feel you've mastered something, you move on to the next thing. If you don't know what the next thing is, then you turn to theory in order to identify it.
That's all the balance you need. Learning about a thing is not doing the thing. Do the thing. Identify what you want to work on, draw a little progress meter on piece of paper, and start doing it. Do it for 20 hours, filling up the meter. At the end of 20 hours, you have a choice: draw another meter for another task, or stop doing the thing.
The problem you face is thinking that motivation is your problem. Your problem is that you are not doing the thing. How you feel when you are not doing the thing is irrelevant. How you feel after you've done the thing - and you notice that it's not what you wanted to it be - is irrelevant. You will never be at the goal, that's the whole point of practice.
I agree with what you say and I've definitely considered and thought about what you've said in the past, but it never quite works like that in practice. But that's also to say that I'm being unreasonable.
In the case of music for example, I had the realisation that part of the reason why I struggled is because I simply had no idea what I was listening to. This lead me to spend around 4 months familiarising myself with every single EDM genre and the kinds of sounds they use, and although I now find this knowledge invaluable, I'm not sure how I would have done this whilst also maintaining practice. In my mind, it was a necessary evil that I just had to knock out of the way, to the detriment of actual practice.
I guess my issue is my all or nothing attitude, which I really struggle to avoid and somehow even if I do start balanced and focused on practice, it somehow ends up becoming "all in" on a single way of learning.
But a question if you're available:
- How do you maintain that interest/curiosity without going "all in"? You say the feeling is irrelevant, but what is the drive? How do you maintain consistent curiosity?
I often think that the mania is a coping mechanism for a lack of curiosity/interest, and perhaps as well to mask the anxiety/boredom that art can bring.
1. How do I maintain interest/curiosity? I do not. I lose momentum and interest. I get depressed. So I pull out a blank sheet of paper and draw a progress meter. I commit to 20 hours of practice - dedicated either to a new skill or to generally overcoming my stagnation. I have done this dozens of times, and it has never failed, I always regain my passion.
2. How do I avoid going all in? Going all in is my default. I treat the 20 hour mark not only as a goal, but as a stopping point. I must make the conscious decision to draw another meter in order to continue, after considering how my time is being spent - otherwise I can become obsessed and lose balance in my life.
Note that your phrasing is self-defeating. You are telling yourself a story which appears maladaptive. Just listen to yourself: 4 months of valuable experience was an "evil" that you had to "knock out" to the "detriment" of "actual" practice.
You identified a weakness: You knew that you needed to develop your ear, and make sense of the territory. You might have collected a hundred brief sound clips and challenged yourself to identify the sub-genre. You might have randomly selected a genre and challenged yourself to produce a very brief (even minimal) piece that expresses its essence. You might have taken a short composition and, for any given genre, challenged yourself to reinterpret your own song in that style.
Here's an idea. Take 5 different genres, and challenge yourself to making a short piece that gradually and naturally transitions between them. Optionally ignore all other constraints, like global structure, general appeal, consistent aesthetics, etc.
You did 4 months of practice which was in all likelihood less than ideal, somewhat inefficient. So what? That's a positive, not a negative. Next time, try to incorporate "doing the thing" into your regimen and you won't feel like you've lost momentum.
Interesting, do you have any examples/literature on this idea of a progress meter? I think I might try that. Especially the whole 20 hour idea, I think will be really useful for me.
Here's an old album of the style meter I use [1]. I recommend a soothing blue & green for hobbies, I use red for client work. 20 Hours is the allocation for all skill learning. The tokens are part of a much larger whole as I've unified fun, skills, work, mental health and financial planning into a single system. I have programs that do most of it, but keeping it as a marker/paper UI is critical if you struggle with mental health or motivation, so that you can easily bootstrap yourself.
I extended the 20 hour practice idea from Josh Kaufman [2]
I highly recommend Sam Harris (Waking Up), Alan Watts, Laozi for mindfulness / meditation, as well as Iain McGilchrist (The Master & His Emissary), Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (Flow) and David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) for metaphorical inspiration. Learning to play at life in any moment helps to eliminate tedium & boredom from your vocabulary.
The problem I have with music, is that I can't get it to sound like the other music that I like. And no amount of just "making music" will get me to sound like that.
Instead, what you need to do is actually study other people's music, through analysis, studying genre, watch tutorials etc. And this has helped me significantly. The reason I say that this is because I've had so many epiphanies about how I've been doing it completely "wrong" in regards to what I thought I should have been doing vs what I actually should have been doing.
In addition, if I just focus on making music I get demotivated cause it just doesn't sound like how I want it to.
The problem is that it's really hard to balance between making music and studying music. When you're studying music, it's like that becomes your focus and it consumes you. Which also demotivates you from making music.
But yeah, obviously I'm aware of what the issues are, but I'm not quite sure how to approach it all in a sustainable way.