Lately I've been busy doing all kind of things. I try to publish at least two times a day on Steemit because I love this website and this community, I try to read from two books I bought and also read articles and e-books I have on my computer, create design packages for Graphic River and thinking about new projects to work on.
All that leaves me with too little time to do things I like or I should be doing, like learning new things. Searching for a movie to watch is a total nightmare, because I don't want to spend two hours watching something I don't like. Same with trying to learn new skills - I'm just terrified that I'll lose days trying to learn something that I actually hate or that I'm not good at.
However, while reading one of the books I now have, written by Sir Ken Robinson, I understood something pretty interesting - I may have more talents and aptitudes that I'm aware of, and the only way to discover them is by trying new things and see what I'm naturally good at.
The bad thing is that while I'd love to do that, I also hate losing time on things that I may fail at. If trying new things will mean that I'll spend days doing certain activities just to find out I'm not good at them, it means I'll lose a lot of time that I could invest in work.
Now, here's the interesting part - one of the main reasons I'm so afraid of trying new things and learning all kind of skills is that I know I'll suck at it. We all suck when we do something for the first time. If you ever tried to draw without having any prior knowledge about that activity, you know how horrible the end result was. Same if you tried to code or to work in Photoshop.
The thing is that no matter what we do, we're always bad when we're trying something new. It's because we have no experience and not enough knowledge to create amazing things. I believe we should stop worrying about that and give ourselves permission to suck.
Sucking at all kind of things is something almost all of us want to avoid. Either people will laugh at us or we'll fail without someone knowing, and we'll feel bad that we can't do things the way we want. No matter the case, we avoid putting ourselves in a position where we may suck at something in order to not feel bad about it.
I think this is exactly the thing we should be doing - put ourselves in situations where we're learning new things that we're not good at in order to make progress in our life and work. Once we learn how to not worry about sucking and failing, we'll discover how useful doing new things actually is.
For example, when I first started working in Photoshop I was really bad at it. I couldn't understand how to create nice things and I wanted to give up multiple times, because I sucked at it. However, I kept going and I kept learning more and more until I got to this point where I'm making money using that software.
It was the same with writing. When I first started I had no idea how to write anything, I was making a lot of mistakes and I couldn't understand why people weren't interested in my work. I wanted to give up, but I decided not to. I kept failing again and again until I got to publish here, on Steemit. My articles are certainly not the best, but at least I'm able to create something decent without people telling me I should quit.
The good thing is that I managed to learn new things in the past even if I was really bad at them. The bad thing is that I stopped doing that. I got comfortable. I got in a comfort zone where I just do what I'm good at again and again without trying something new, because I don't want to fail and realize I lost a lot of time on something that wasn't as good as I hoped.
That's gonna stop really soon. I want to learn new things and evolve, and I'm willing to lose some free time for that. Once I reach 300 design packages on Graphic River I'll stop working on Actions and I'll start working once again on Photomanipulation elements and even try to create print designs, something I never did in the past, and maybe work with software like InDesign.
I will also start learning how to draw once again and spend a few hours every single day drawing whatever comes into my mind, trying to get better and lastly, I will start using Illustrator once again, learn how that software works and try to create interesting things, even tho I was never able to do it.
I am willing to give myself permission to suck and try new things in order to improve and learn other skills. I strongly believe you should do the same. We all want to have all kind of skills and work on a lot of projects, but our work doesn't let us. We have a limited amount of free time and we want to make sure we're using it the right way.
However, if you don't do your best to learn new things and evolve in what you do, then you'll never get to work on the projects you want to start, and that means you'll stay in the place you are right now for a long time before being forced to get out of it and do something with your life.
Instead of waiting for that to happen, I think you should take some time, each day, to practice things you're not really good at and learn something new. Take one or two hours every day and draw, write or code. It doesn't matter what it is, just do it and try to improve.
You will suck at it, especially if it's your first time. Don't think too much about it, and focus on improving. It doesn't matter how much you suck and how many times you'll fail. All that matters is the final result and if you're capable of learning at least the basics of the new skill you're interested in.
Spending at least one hour every day practicing drawing or coding will get you more knowledge than not doing it because you want to avoid losing time. Do that for a month, and you may get to have basic understandings of how to draw humans or places, or how to code small applications or create websites.
All it takes is one or two hours practicing something you're not good at, avoiding to think about failing and sucking at it. Once you learn how to do that and once you make a habit out of it, learning something new will no longer be a problem, and maybe you'll even stop thinking about how much time you'll be losing doing something you never did before, and you'll just do it.