Activation Energy of Talent

One of the hardest parts about being a human is how tough it is to do new things that you aren't good at. I don't know, maybe other people can just do things without much effort, but for me, it takes a lot of energy to get into something new that I've never done before.

I like to joke that my wife is really good at everything she does... because she only does things that she's good at. But isn't that true for so many of us? And even then, many of the things we do end up doing fill us with imposter syndrome — we really think we're good enough to just do this thing? When so many other people can do the thing so much better than us?

For the most part, the only difference between us and them is the time we put into doing the thing. I'm pretty good at cooking because I've spent a lot of time reading recipes, watching Babish, and actually cooking. I can read code and make fancy websites because I've spent a long time doing it.

But there was a time when I wasn't good at reading and writing code. Code editors filled me with anxiety. It took me so long to do anything, because I didn't have a good sense for what needed to be done. I remember one time I needed to access an object's property by a variable name... and I had no idea how to do that. Now I do, and I do it all the time. But not knowing how to do that offhand fills me with anxiety and disappointment at how difficult and daunting it is. (const propertyValue = bjectVariable[propertyName], for those who were curious)

When I do new things, I get the same feeling. I'm trying to learn how to compose music with mod trackers, and starting at square one means I have to learn:

How to add samples

How samples even work

A host of tracker commands

The idiosyncrasies of the mod player I'm working with

On top of the mountain of music theory and composition stuff that I'm still trying to learn.

Chemical reactions won't start until the system absorbs sufficient activation energy from some external source, at which the reaction produced enough energy to continue until the ingredients are spent. But that activation energy is required to get anything started.

Developing talents feels like that sometimes. I have to put enough time and energy into a thing, developing skills and tacit knowledge, before eventually it... clicks? I wouldn't even say that. Eventually I won't have to look up every little thing, I'll remember how different parts work and piece together. I'll be able to get into a flow and make progress.

But it takes a lot of energy to get there. And that energy has got to come from somewhere.