Jan is ready for a new challenge. She’s recently moved to Colorado and wants to take advantage of the new terrain and start mountain running. Before the move, she’d been working on her fitness for months, but only on the treadmill.
She feels excited to start, but also unsure of herself. She’s found a meetup group that says it’s beginner-friendly, but is still nervous to actually go in case that isn’t the reality.
People often associate the beginner phase with discomfort, including confusion, self-doubt, frustration over mistakes, and anxiety about meeting new people or being evaluated.
However, being a beginner at any experiential pursuit is also uniquely rich. This applies whether you’re training for a new career, taking up a skill, or parenting for the first time.
Beginners often experience so-called “newbie gains,” a period of rapid improvement in the first couple of years of a new practice, before progress continues but becomes harder to achieve.
We only get to experience the beginner phase once. It’s a snapshot in time that’s worth learning to enjoy.
Here are five tips for doing that, so you have a better experience of any new endeavor, instead of seeking to rush through it.
1. Don’t Try to Be Invisible
Beginners often seek not to stand out. They want to make their newbie mistakes quietly, unnoticed.
However, this approach often counteracts actual progress.
Social support increases success, for example, when you seek out people you can ask questions of when you’re stuck or role models who can help give you a realistic perception of what to expect. When you go under the radar, you cut yourself off from these supports.
Value progress more than you value avoiding your newness or mistakes being noticed. As a beginner, you can’t avoid asking questions or trying things that will seem silly in retrospect, because you don’t yet know what you don’t know.
2. Enjoy Your Newbie Gains and Preserve the Memory
Earlier I mentioned “newbie gains,” the period of rapid progress beginners often experience. Inherent in this idea is that you were worse very recently.
We think we’ll always remember what being a beginner felt like, but inevitably we don’t. Being able to look back on it has value, so preserve it. Keep a few notes. Record a few videos talking about your inner experiences, achievements and struggles. Narrate the journey, if only for future you.
Today’s struggles become tomorrow’s stories. Imagine yourself at a more accomplished stage looking back on where you’re at now. In retrospect, you’ll be proud of the version of you who muddled through your clueless phase. What feels messy now will feel impressive later.
3. Enjoy the Abundance of Resources Aimed at Beginners
Search for tips on almost any skill and you’ll find far more aimed at beginners than any other stage. This creates a lot of options for how to get started, which is wonderful.
Take advantage of these resources. This wealth of beginner content reflects more-experienced people’s enthusiasm for sharing their knowledge and passion with newcomers.
Keep in mind that you’ll probably get the impression your learning journey is less aesthetic and streamlined than it should be.
Effective skill building usually feels clumsy. People like to be efficient, but you usually can’t be efficient until after you know how to do something.
4. You Might Be a Beginner at This Specific Activity but You’re Not a Beginner at Learning
Even on Day 1 of trying a new activity, you’re not a blank slate. You’ve got a lot of experience at learning to draw on.
For a start, you know what the learning cycle feels like: what it feels like to pass through the various stages. Whatever you’re trying now probably isn’t the hardest thing you’ve accomplished.
Put this new journey in the context of all those you’ve completed.
Apply your self-knowledge, for example, about self-sabotaging patterns not to repeat, like starting out so enthusiastically and intensely, you burn out.
Which learning methods work for you, even if they’re challenging? For example, you know testing, evaluation, or time limits help you level up, or you need scenario-based learning to achieve deep understanding.
Using personalized methods you’ve used before can help you link your current learning journey to earlier ones. For example, flashcards, the method of loci (a memory technique where you associate facts with a familiar route or place), or group study sessions with friends might all take you back to college, in a good way.
5. Limit Low-Quality Learning
In the age of abundant well-produced videos on virtually everything, it’s tempting to think we can learn well from passively watching slick content. Those resources can help orient us to what we will have to learn, but not actually build our desired deep knowledge, skills, or experience.
Learning that feels easy is often a sign that nothing is going into your brain.
Low-quality learning can distort our perception of our progress in two opposite ways. It can make us think our knowledge is deeper than it is. Watching charismatic instructors who excel at explanation, or repetitive passive viewing, can make us confuse following along with understanding.
Conversely, since we can put a lot of time into passive learning without achieving much, this can lead to wrongly perceiving ourselves as not having the aptitude to achieve deeper understanding.
Beyond initial orientation, consider treating videos as mostly entertainment. Watch for fun, but not as a substitute for better methods.
Make Your Beginner Experience One You Don’t Want to Rush Through
The beginner phase for any activity only happens once. Instead of rushing it, treat it as a unique experience. Imagine looking back: How do you want to remember how you met today’s challenges? How can you create a narrative that helps you feel proud of yourself now and doesn’t demand being manicured or optimized? What do you hope to learn about yourself? Relish the richness of being a beginner instead of wishing your newness away.
