How To Figure Out What You're Not Good At

A blog post^[1] that has rolled around in my head ever since it arrived in my feed reader is How to say what you're good at by David R. Maciver. Here's the main reason it has stuck with me:

As with many hard things, I think part of this is just that nobody has ever told you how to do it. So, here’s one way to do it.

Probably the best piece of advice I have on this comes from Sasha Chapin:

[…] talent doesn’t feel like you’re amazing. It feels like the difficulties that trouble others are mysteriously absent in your case. Don’t ask yourself where your true gifts lie. Ask what other people seem weirdly bad at.

Blogs are amazing, because they let you link to other things.^[2] and Maciver's post linked to an insight that I had never heard being put quite this way. And what it unlocked was not necessarily a better feeling for what I'm good at or what my talents are (that also happened), but what I'm actually bad at! And that was weirdly helpful. It helped to relax a little bit. I think you can credibly invert what the writer Sasha Chapin is saying:

Being untalented or middling at something doesn't feel like you're untalented. It feels like there are weird difficulties and troubles that others that are successful don't seem to encounter.

I have had this feeling pretty often, if I'm honest. I felt like I knew a lot and learned to see what was needed in some area, but somehow, I was unable to put it into practice. And even with a heavy heaping of "I'm still learning, I'm on my way, I'm obviously not there yet, but I will be" added, these weird difficulties would not stop to show up. And others seemed to not have them. Or not have them as bad. Can't chalk up all of it to bad luck, either. But what is it, then?

Well, I increasingly think that I am just not as good at some things than others.^[3] And being middling at something feels exactly like this: "Why is this harder for me? I get what I have to do, and I am even doing it, and it still is hard because there are these pesky obstacles everywhere. But why?"

Don't get me wrong: Of course, some things are hard for everyone. Of course, some things I think I am good at now have been hard in the past. But taken this all as read, there are still things that somehow elude me.

Want an example? Video games. Turns out I'm horrendous at them. I love playing them, but I have never really been good at them.^[4] I have spent enormous amounts of time playing them over my 39 years on this planet. Thousands of hours. Probably more than 10000.^[5] And I even like to watch high-level players play sometimes. One of my favorite games is the pretty difficult roguelike deck builder called Slay The Spire. I have more than 1000 hours in that thing alone. But watching high-level players play it and then trying to replicate what I see... I could never do it! I told myself that it surely just was that it is not my job to use my best brain cycles for games and there is also luck involved. But here's the thing: These streamers - like Baalorlord, for example - tend to also play other games than only Slay The Spire. And what is amazing to me: They can pick up a new to them game and immediately crank up the difficulty and just... win. At least win a lot more than I could ever have even on normal difficulty.

And yes, part of that is that these people probably play today and have played in the past a lot more than me and indeed use their best brain cycles for gaming - whereas I tend to use my best cycles for programming nowadays - but having now watched high-level STS players play this game that I am so intently familiar with for hundreds of hours - it is very often my cozy background sound nowadays - I can pretty definitely say: These people are simply better at games than me. They are able to see the winning line in a fight, the better overall strategy, the "obvious" card pick, the right judgment of why cards and relics are good in general and in context of the current run. And I can kinda follow along and kinda sometimes guess what they would do before they do it, but it is more like a sports fan who imagines himself to be a pretty solid baseball player if things would've gone differently than being actually be able to replicate what I see. I think there is no shame in admitting it anymore: I love games, but I kind of suck at them. And not winning at XCOM or Civ or Stellaris or may other games that I have loved but never came close to finish is not really about the games' pace or "unclear instructions" or whatever: It's just that there are others who breeze through what I perceive as ambiguities with ease and "solve" these games and I simply don't or only with lots of patience and brute-force because, actually, games are harder for me than for others.

And video games is just one example of many where - to me - it looks like there are just a few obstacles in my way that others don't seem to encounter or are at least not as bothered by. If I had just a little more time and/or experience... No. Sometimes, not always, but also not never, and I suspect more often than I'd like, what's actually happening is simply that I have encountered something I'm just not as good at (or at the very least as outstanding at). And - amazingly - these things can include "brainy" things that I like also, like strategy video games. What a relief!

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