Why Being a Jack of All Adventures is Better Than Being a Master of One

The serial hobbyist is not one to settle, always looking for the next opportunity to take, skill to learn, or activity to do. Reece, like many Explorers, lives by this definition with pride. He thinks we should all take the time to step back and become beginners again – to stretch our boundaries, learn something new, and enjoy the process.

I’ve always liked the term ‘the jack of all trades’. I learnt it in high school, when a friend dubbed me one – probably because I played sports, as well as video games. I thought of myself as someone who did it all, who had friends in different circles, and relished busy weekends. For this reason, I considered myself somewhat ‘popular’ – the mark of success in every high-schooler’s brain.

I still consider myself someone who does it all but now associate it with a different title: the serial hobbyist.

The serial hobbyist is someone who’s always chasing the next opportunity, who starts learning a new skill without mastering the last. While this character trait has led to a garage full of various sporting equipment, half-finished projects, and subscriptions to outdoors magazines and language-learning websites I can’t cancel, I think it’s all worth it.

Maybe the Toddlers Were Doing Something Right

The cliche that kids see the world through fresh eyes holds strong with the serial hobbyist. As children, anything and everything excites us. We ask questions of the hows and whys of the world, we have to approach every situation as a beginner, and we are, generally, open to learning anything and everything that falls into our path.

Samantha Gualtieri and Amy Finn, psychologists with the University of Toronto, state in their paper on the ‘sweet spot’ where children learn better than adults, that ‘children explore more than adults in ways that are systematic and directed…[ongoing cognitive development and weaker prior knowledge] make childhood a particularly unique and successful period for learning’.

Sailing in Costa Rica | Photo by Pamela Johnston

It’s the blank slate of a kid’s brain that allows them to lack the fear of humiliation that adults have learnt from past experiences. The scabs I used to sport at primary school (often marks of failed drop-ins at the skate park) weren’t so much a show of poor proficiency but of what I got up to after school.

Contrarily, being ‘bad’ or a ‘beginner’ as an adult is often viewed as something we need to avoid at all costs. We aim to become as proficient as we can, as quickly as possible, to avoid the humiliation of poor performance.

As portrayed during the naivety of childhood, being a beginner is often the most exciting. The rush of the first wave you catch is likely more memorable than your thousandth, as is the first time you successfully topped a route at your local climbing crag, or ran 5km without stopping. Progress is the reason the majority of us do the things we do and the point at which progress is (seemingly) the most rapid and satisfying is in the first few steps we take into something.

Read more: Is Being Bad at Surfing… Actually Good?

The Peak of Mt Stupid and the Valley of Despair

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the theory that relates actual and perceived ability, stating that as you initially begin to learn and improve a skill, your perceived ability grows significantly quicker than your actual.

The crescendo of this relation is popularly known as the ‘Peak of Mt Stupid’, where perception of proficiency significantly outweighs the actual. At this stage, you’re your most confident, excited, and motivated. As you continue to practice, you fall off the peak and arrive at the ‘Valley of Despair’, where your awareness of your actual ability catches up with you and motivation and confidence reach an all-time low.

Graph from Wikicommons

In this context, the Dunning-Kruger effect isn’t meant to underline how overconfident you may be but to reinforce how joyous the initial stages of learning a skill are. This is when you’re able to ride the wave of overconfidence, pushing yourself to improve and it’s often the most enjoyable stage of the learning process.

This is where the serial hobbyist thrives – operating in the area before the initial peak in confidence in not just one hobby but multiple. We’re allowed to enjoy the learning process of multiple skills simultaneously, engaging them purely for fun, without needing to chase an often unattainable perfection or prove proficiency.

Each Skill Unlocks a New Part of the World

I recently visited Iguazu Falls in Argentina, well-known as the world’s largest waterfall complex. Walking around a national park on clearly-marked boardwalks and a tourist train isn’t the way I usually spend time in nature but I had an incredible day, both due to the 275 cascades I saw but also the amount of birdwatching I did.

I was in my first few months of birding, a hobby that, like most, I initially thought was reserved for retirees. After being exposed to it whilst hiking with some friends, I was quickly hooked and within a few weeks I was identifying birds in cities and on hiking trails alike, hyper-aware of small movements and sounds through the landscape.

So there I was at one of the most famous waterfalls in the world, looking away from the view, trying to ID a bird, much to the dismay of other day-trippers.

Much like rock climbers tracking routes while hiking a valley, surfers studying waves during brekkie at a beach cafe, and sailors noticing minute wind changes from their office window, I’d found a new way to see our world, to immerse myself in it and be present.

The more hobbies you take the time to learn and practice, the more you open yourself up to new ways of viewing the world. You allow yourself to expand your mind, change the way you approach a natural environment, and understand your surroundings more thoroughly.

Who knew mountain biking would lead me to the desert?

The Small Talk Hack

My Dad thrust me onto a surfboard at age four as a means of teaching me the vital life skills of a blonde kid from Sydney, with the typical childhood skills of walking and talking taking a momentary back seat. However, as my childhood progressed, I lost the blondeness and with it, surfing.

New hobbies always come with more than one new skill

It later found a place in my sporting rotation during my late teens as an excuse to go to the beach alone, meaning I spent many an afternoon at the beach coughing up lungfuls of water, alone.

Not long after, I joined the university surf club and sessions soon became social exercises as well as physical ones. Despite initial fears that my abilities would affect my social standings in the club, what I found was an incredibly supportive community and to this day, some of my best mates – even in a sport that’s often characterised by its high barrier to entry and judgemental constituents.

Still barely able to string a few turns together, I now rarely surf alone, whether I’m battling the masses in Sydney or fumbling my Spanish skills at an Ecuadorian point break – because wherever there’s a Surfline forecast, I’ve found an open-armed community.

A special trait of the serial hobbyist is that we often run in multiple circles, able to join a group regardless of where we are in the world, with mutuality based solely on shared interest. Small talk is left at the front door with many a stranger, often traded for intense conversations and sometimes arguments, purely based on excitement toward a broad range of topics, skills, and hobbies. With many interests, a friend is made in any corner of the world.

Find yourself a mate with a canoe and a van

Staying Grounded

For me, being a serial hobbyist isn’t about trying to do everything just for the sake of being ‘the person who does it all’. Intentionality shouldn’t waver – it’s important to ensure you approach new experiences with gusto and humility – that you try something new for the sake of learning, making the most of your time, and opening your mind to being a beginner once again.

Some say the point of our lives is to spend as much time as possible doing what we love. So get out there, turn on your toddler brain, and try something new. After all, life’s just one big learning opportunity and it’s our duty to make the most of every second we’re given.

It’s just one foot in front of the other

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