Doing things you’re bad at can be embarrassing. But the best way to get better is usually to practice.
I’m bad at humming. Since my voice changed in my teens, I essentially haven’t hummed.
Sometimes social situations call for humming, like referencing a tune. Then I can either hum badly, which can result in “I can’t tell what tune that is because you’re bad at humming”. Or I can not hum. So I rarely hum.
From my perspective, practicing yields an improvement in my skill from “bad” to “slightly less bad”. However, an uninformed onlooker would update their estimate of my skill from their prior “probably average” to “pretty bad”, leading them to think less of me than if I had simply avoided the situation.
If people see me doing something that I’m good at, like doing pull-ups, I often get compliments. When they see me doing something I’m bad at, like humming, I get embarrassed. I suspect this results in a general tendency to practice things you’re good at, and neglecting practice of shortcomings.
I’ve decided to put in some deliberate practice into things I’m embarrassingly bad at. I reasoned that improvement is usually faster in the beginning, with lots of low-hanging fruits. So upgrading skills from “bad” to “OK” should be relatively cheap.
So far I’ve managed to remove the worst voice cracks when humming certain notes (that G3 is tricky for me), learned to swallow small pills, and gotten somewhat comfortable in the deep end of the swimming pool, in the span of a week. While I don’t expect to receive any positive reinforcement from these skills, I think it has been a good use of my time, and you can consider doing the same for some of your own shortcomings.
Doing things you’re bad at can be embarrassing. But the best way to get better is usually to practice.
I’m bad at humming. Since my voice changed in my teens, I essentially haven’t hummed.
Sometimes social situations call for humming, like referencing a tune. Then I can either hum badly, which can result in “I can’t tell what tune that is because you’re bad at humming”. Or I can not hum. So I rarely hum.
From my perspective, practicing yields an improvement in my skill from “bad” to “slightly less bad”. However, an uninformed onlooker would update their estimate of my skill from their prior “probably average” to “pretty bad”, leading them to think less of me than if I had simply avoided the situation.
If people see me doing something that I’m good at, like doing pull-ups, I often get compliments. When they see me doing something I’m bad at, like humming, I get embarrassed. I suspect this results in a general tendency to practice things you’re good at, and neglecting practice of shortcomings.
I’ve decided to put in some deliberate practice into things I’m embarrassingly bad at. I reasoned that improvement is usually faster in the beginning, with lots of low-hanging fruits. So upgrading skills from “bad” to “OK” should be relatively cheap.
So far I’ve managed to remove the worst voice cracks when humming certain notes (that G3 is tricky for me), learned to swallow small pills, and gotten somewhat comfortable in the deep end of the swimming pool, in the span of a week. While I don’t expect to receive any positive reinforcement from these skills, I think it has been a good use of my time, and you can consider doing the same for some of your own shortcomings.