7 Traps You Can Avoid When Starting Something New
Skip the things that hold people back.
Starting something new, whether it’s a project, a new hobby, or picking up a new skill is both exciting and daunting. If you’re as impulsive as me, it’s easy to get quickly stuck into a new hobby. This unfortunately also means you will make mistakes. Here’s the things I wish I knew to avoid about 15 hobbies ago.
Beginner’s Paralysis
Each new venture is a door that leads to a thousand new doors. But which door do you go through? Then, after that door, which door after that? And after that?
Just pick one.
Using art as an example, there are so many different avenues to go through. You need to know what kind of art you’re going to make. You decide on painting. Then, you have to figure out what kind of brushes are best, what colors are best, and so on.
You’ll get stuck doing research for hours and you may never actually get started. It’s happened to me plenty of times.
So just trust your gut. What made you interested in the first place? Go with that option. You’re much more likely to be successful and have fewer regrets if you actually enjoy what you’re doing.
Speaking of regrets…
The Money Sink
You’ve decided what avenue you’re going to take in your new project! Now you need to go get the supplies to get started.
Now, don’t just walk into Guitar Center and buy the $6000 dollar Les Paul on the rack, even if you have money to throw at it. You still have the opportunity to find out you hate playing the guitar.
All you need at the beginning is the bare minimum to start. When I started learning the guitar, I did it with an old, cheap guitar I got for free from my brother and a $20 amplifier from Facebook Marketplace. They did not sound good. But even if I had that $6000 guitar, it wasn’t going to sound good because I didn’t have the skills to make it sound good.
You have the most basic of skills, so all you need is the most basic of tools. You can upgrade once you’ve spent a significant amount of time enhancing those skills.
The Time Sink
Have you ever been working on something that you just can’t quite get right, so you keep working, tweaking and getting it closer and closer to perfection when suddenly you look at the clock and it’s been 4 hours?
Congratulations, you just spent 4 hours not getting much better. If you spend so much time tweaking tiny details that you barely understand, upon fixing those details you will inevitably cause or notice another imperfection, and the cycle continues.
First of all, there’s no such thing as perfection, really, and second — you shouldn’t be striving for perfection at the beginning anyway. Each time you pick it up, set an achievable goal, like “I’m going to make my shadows in this sketch look a little better than in my last one.”
If you expect to produce the Sistine Chapel when you’re first starting (or even years and years later) you’re just going to have a bad time. Save yourself the blow to your self-esteem. Take your time and learn something every time you practice.
The Backlog
You only have so much time, but you will never stop coming up with ideas and goals, and the entities that help you create those ideas will never stop producing.
Any gamer is familiar with the concept of the backlog. I myself have over 100 games in my Steam library that I haven’t booted even a single time, much to the dismay of my wallet over the years (see The Money Sink above).
I want to play all those games, I really do! But when I look at that long, long list of games, each taking several hours to complete at the most bare level, all I feel is dread and decide not to do it. Don’t get yourself in this situation.
You may have 50 songs you want to learn to play, or 35 paintings you eventually want to get around to painting, but learn to limit yourself. Pick the ideas that stand out to you the most, and write them in a list of ten. Ten projects to complete before you create another list of ten.
It’s difficult at first, but when you get into the habit of only thinking about what’s immediately in front of you, it gets easier to manage.
Don’t Rush
But what if I get halfway through my ten and I just can’t wait to do something that’s on my next ten? There are plenty of options, but definitely don’t just blaze through your current list to get to that one thing.
Your projects you originally felt excited about become nothing more than obstacles to get through. You’ll do them sloppily, and when you look back you’ll wish you hadn’t.
I have plenty of miniatures I’ve painted (I know, very nerdy) quickly and sloppily, just because I wanted to get to the next thing. I look back and them and I really wish I had taken more time to do them correctly.
If something really excites you that much, make an exception! Just swap it with one of your current projects and do the other one later. Do whatever you need to to make sure you’re still enjoying yourself and not getting burned out because you turned it into a chore.
Stopping
It really doesn’t need to be stated, but don’t quit. Burnout is a very real thing. It happens with everything, work, writing, hobbies. Don’t let it be a death sentence for the things you enjoy.
If you say you’re taking a break, then only take a break. Too many times have I put something down because I overdid it and can’t even look at it again.
It’s like if you only ate donuts for an entire month, all day, every day. Like, just absolutely stuffing your face with donuts, to the point where you feel completely full after every meal. By the end of the month, you’d probably never want to eat a donut again.
There is such thing as too much of a good thing. Even if you love something, everything is better in moderation.
Not Stopping
If you get a month into a new project and find you absolutely hate it, then stop doing it. Nobody will look down on you for realizing something isn’t for you, and you certainly aren’t winning any awards for being determined to be miserable.
Save your mental health (and your money and time).
Don’t Overwhelm Yourself
Obviously, 100% of your time is not going to be devoted solely to your new project (at least, it shouldn’t be). You will find new projects to pick up as you go, and you will have other things that you did before you start something new.
Make sure you have time to do those things, and definitely make sure you have time to do the things you need. Pulling an all-nighter on the night before your final exam in your last semester of college just to learn a song on the guitar is 1) not going to make you learn that song faster and 2)definitely not going to help you pass your final (I learned this the hard way).
If you have too much going on at once, you’ll fall back into Paralysis, you’ll feel like giving up, and then you might have to start the process over from the beginning.
Don’t spread yourself too thin. Just enjoy yourself.
