Barrier to Entry

The key to getting good at anything is just to start. But starting isn’t always easy.

For many people, just being bad at something is enough of a detriment that they never start at all, so of course they never get good. But that’s just the table stakes; you have to be willing to suck at something for a while first.

Assuming you get over that mental block (and you should!), the next thing is just this: stuff costs juice to even try.

And different things require different amounts of juice, which is the thrust of my post today. If you want to take up “walking” as a hobby, that’s not very costly. You need some comfortable shoes, and that’s about it. But if you want to try out yachting, that’s a bit more of an investment up front.

As I think about most of my hobbies, they fall into one of two categories: either they’re low-barrier-to-entry hobbies that I got into myself, or they’re high-barrier-to-entry hobbies that a friend was already into.

See, unless you have a lot of excess resources or you’re very unusual, you probably don’t just decide one day to buy a yacht when you’ve never been on one. It’s more likely that someone in your peer group has one, and you go on it frequently until you decide “Yeah, this is something I want to do.”

High-barrier-to-entry hobbies become exceedingly easier if they’re part of a peer group experience. So the real lesson is this: have a varied peer group! Make new friends and say “yes” to stuff they want to do.

I’m always amazed when a friend (or even casual acquaintance) asks me if I want to participate in their niche hobby and is surprised when I say yes. The default experience for so many people seems to be to ask someone to try a new thing and receive rejection after rejection. What a terrible way to live! I want to try stuff. I won’t like all of it, but if I don’t try then I won’t find the stuff I do like. I’ve tried lots of stuff I only did once, but I’ve also ended up with fantastic hobbies that I’d never have discovered otherwise.

So to bring this full circle – even the hobby of “trying stuff” can be something you have to suck at in order to get good at. So to ever get good, you first need to just start. The next time someone asks you to do a weird thing, say yes!