Most things aren’t that hard to do

I think the big wtf learning of my 20s is/was that lots of things that seem intractably hard are actually not *that* hard, not ~prohibitively~ hard. if you play the wrong note in music, there's a note on either site of the wrong note that would work

— Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) June 16, 2020

Good God, the accuracy of this!

Over a lifetime of picking up some proficiency in various things that seem hard to do, I can tell you this much: they're all easier than you think, if

A. You're ok with getting it slightly wrong as you learn
B. You're ok with getting it slightly wrong in public

The good news is that most things in life, whether it's music, photography, painting, management, or insert-whatever-you-want-to-do-here have an inbuilt tolerance for error. Hitting the wrong note on the piano doesn't make the room implode into a thousand glittery motes of dust, composing your photo wrong doesn't melt your camera into mush, getting that one managerial decision wrong that one time doesn't collapse your company into a point in space. No universes will be harmed by your getting it slightly wrong. And yet, and yet, we treat most things as if the fate of the world depends on it.

Here's how I look at it (as put so well by @josephradhik): what's the worst that could happen. A simple question, with an even simpler answer: not much. Most systems can tolerate small errors, most systems allow you to recover from mistakes, most systems allow you to learn on the job while you get things wrong.

The only golden rule is that you should want to learn from your mistakes. And that over time, you make newer, more novel mistakes that lead to a better understanding of how the system works. Map the universe with your own tiny mis-steps.

Don't go so hard on yourself. The world will not implode. Try something new; it's really not that hard.

PS: Here’s a painting I just completed. And no, I’m not “a painter”. And no, this isn’t perfect. And no, no asteroids struck the earth because I got it just so wrong :)