#6: Trying new things pt. 1
to feel like a kid again
We all start out knowing nothing
As soon as we’re born, we are a blank slate in every regard. We all start out as naked babies with no knowledge, no clothes, no interests, no skills. Every moment and every thing we experience is novel in its own way. Whether we remember it or not, there was a first time for everything. As we went from newborn to baby to toddler to kid to adult, the number of things that were brand new to us naturally decreased over time from being exposed to the real world. At first, everything is unknown and unusual - even eating a banana for the first time is crazy if you’ve never had one before. I, like many people, have very few memories of my early childhood, but I can only imagine that it felt like a constant barrage of sensory overload with being exposed to new tastes, smells, sounds, textures, and sights everyday.
Being a kid is nice because there’s a built-in sense of novelty with everything. As a result, kids innately desire to learn and are default-curious. We’re all born with this sense of wonder and fascination with what now is seemingly mundane - like how do birds fly and what makes the sky blue. When we’re kids, this curiosity with everything works well because we don’t have any responsibilities and have no need to decide what to focus on. As we grow up, we inevitably have to face reality and find something that pays the bills. Today’s labor structure of having one job with a defined set of responsibilities forces us to sacrifice some amount of free-flowing curiosity for focus.
Curiosity morphs in shape as we go from kid to adult, explains Paul Graham:
Kids are curious, but the curiosity I mean has a different shape from kid curiosity. Kid curiosity is broad and shallow; they ask why at random about everything. In most adults this curiosity dries up entirely. It has to: you can't get anything done if you're always asking why about everything. But in ambitious adults, instead of drying up, curiosity becomes narrow and deep. The mud flat morphs into a well.
Curiosity turns work into play. For Einstein, relativity wasn't a book full of hard stuff he had to learn for an exam. It was a mystery he was trying to solve. So it probably felt like less work to him to invent it than it would seem to someone now to learn it in a class.
The change in curiosity from kid curiosity (one mile wide, one inch deep) to adult curiosity (one inch wide, one mile deep) is compatible with how most of society is formatted. Our education system narrows in focus over time and the vast majority of work is specialized which is why we have titles, responsibilities, and repeatable tasks. Advancing up one specific career ladder is a tried and true method to achieving success in the traditional definition. However, for the people who aren’t sure whether they want to be a <job title> for the rest of their life, there isn’t really a culture of exploratory learning for adults or a tangible path to experience kid curiosity again. It almost seems like our curiosity passes through a one-way door, going from broad and expansive to narrow and focused. I don’t think that has to be the case.
Hustle culture is pervasive and there’s a widespread perceived need to optimize everything. Time as a space to fill with activities becomes more rigid. We have morning routines where we do the same thing over and over in an effort to save time and get us ready to do our jobs. We spend the same eight hours a day working and then need the evenings to wind down from the busy day. Many of us have a workout routine where we do the same exercises on the same day every week. Saturday’s are for fun, hanging out with friends, and going out. Sunday’s are for chilling, errands, and getting ready for the next week of work. Even the weekends which are supposed to be more freeform aren’t as loose as we think.
Doing something consistently is satisfying because we can see our progression and having structure provides a sense of predictability, but if there’s no truly free time, then there’s no space to try new things. Trying new things isn’t required for living an amazing life if you already know exactly what you like and have everything figured out, but most people, including myself don’t. And if you’re like me and have lurking, back-of-the-mind thoughts that you haven’t discovered the full palette of your skills, interests, passions, then you must try new things.
Zoom out, there’s time.
Trying new things when you’re no longer a kid can seem risky and daunting. There’s the worry about looking like a fool the first time you try something. Also, there’s a risk that by spending time trying something for the first time you might not be good at it. And if you’re not good at it, you won’t enjoy it which will feel like you wasted your time. Time that you could’ve spent optimizing your morning routine or working a job that you think you like.
For me, the first step was becoming open-minded enough to try new things and that came from the realization that there is still a lot of time. I had a wake-up call recently from two separate moments - one about skiing and the other with surfing:
I used to think that at some point, maybe in my 30s or 40s, I would end up quitting the majority of my hobbies like skiing and surfing since most of them are outdoor or sports-related. I spent this past winter living in ski towns across Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and California and fortunately, with my meeting-free mornings, found myself skiing during the weekdays with mostly locals who were mostly middle-aged, probably in the 40-60 year old range. Then later in the season, I read the headline “96-Year-Old Just Completed 96 Days of Skiing at Snowbird This Season” which is wild. There’s a sense of relief in knowing that if I as long as I stay healthy, I’ll be able to keep skiing into old age.
Recently, during an early morning surf session, I was sitting out in the line-up at Ala Moana Beach park. There were seven older Asian American uncles that knew each other and I was the only young guy at the break. During a lull in the waves, there was an ethereal hallucinatory moment when I looked at these guys and could see a wrinkly, slightly saggy, older version of myself sitting on a surfboard as the eighth person in this crew of friends. Until this moment, I hadn’t thought about how long in life I could surf for.
Paradoxically, this seemingly simple epiphany made me realize that I should double down on existing passions, but also discover new interests since there’s still plenty of time. Seeing all these people still skiing and surfing into their old age has also pushed me to think about my time more intentionally because I would much rather be ripping waves at 60 than sitting on a couch watching reruns of Game of Thrones. On the other hand, maybe between now and then, I will have tried something completely new and really enjoy it. I have no idea what it might be, it’ll take trying to figure it out.
Part 1 conclusion
There are countless examples of late-bloomers who didn’t stumble upon their passion until later in life. According to herself, Julia Child didn’t learn how to truly cook until she was in her 30s. She didn’t publish her first cookbook until she was 50. I vaguely remember seeing her on TV was I was a kid and thought that she had been cooking all her life. Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, didn’t get into the restaurant industry until he was 52. Vera Wang didn’t design dresses until she was 40. I’m not saying that we all have hidden skills waiting to be discovered that will catapult us into hall-of-fame status. There are plenty of small things that are to be discovered like a favorite meal, song, or tv show. If we accept that our future career, passion, lifestyle, interests may look different than today’s, then that by definition must require change which in turn requires trying new things.
We’re all born with built-in curiosity so we never think about it. Along the journey of growing up, that curiosity naturally erodes beneath us which we don’t realize. We get stuck in our ways and inertia keeps us in the same place, doing the same things, with the same people. There’s a delicate balance between dedicated consistency and exploring the unknown. I’m trying to find the right ratio and next time I’ll try to share how I’ve been approaching trying new things.
Leave a comment or message me on Twitter if you have any questions/feedback/ideas!