Somewhere in my career I realized this as well and it has been incredibly helpful.

I call it "embrace the suckiness". When faced with a problem that seems impossible because you lack so much knowledge you are just going to have to accept that you suck for a little while. You have to stay calm and break the problem down into smaller problems and start trying the most retarded things you can think of. Sure, you'll struggle. And yes, half of what you try is going to be worthless, but you're acquiring knowledge and understanding at every step. Eventually it'll all make sense. You have to stay confident that there's light at the end of the tunnel. Solving tough problems and learning new things is all about persistence.

I can't express how important this mindset is for me. It's so statisfying to know that I can handle any problem thrown at me and I won't freak out or me give up. I just keep sucking until I don't.

It's exceptionally hard to start when the end results (i.e. other more experienced people) are so graceful or impressive. It makes the beginning seem like such a farce. Like going to the gym and deadlifting an empty bar beside someone pulling 5 or 6 hundred pounds off the floor.

But yeah, you have to start somewhere.

Congrats on taking the first class! I forced myself to do something similar after a nasty breakup, and the first 4-6 classes were brutal. Then I finally got the hang of it!

Glad you aspire to be more like Jake the Dog.

> the first 4-6 classes were brutal

I’ve also been thinking about this a lot lately as I play piano more consistently. When I first learn a song it’s agony. I’m straining my brain so hard to figure out a reasonable fingering. The first week or two (assuming practice every day) is likewise quite tough or draining. And then muscle memory kicks in and I’m amazed that I’m able to play the song faster than expected. I feel like this process is way more applicable to learning in general than I used to give it credit. For some reason piano just makes the entire process crystal clear.

Learning is such an incredibly interesting topic for me. The concept behind something like machine learning is easy enough to understand- especially since you can implement everything by yourself and know exactly how it works. 'Human learning' is just so spectacularly abstracted from these models that it leaves me wondering how the heck we actually learn anything. Some examples like your piano playing and muscle memory are some of the more straightforward ones, where we figure something out like 'oh, this section is easier to play with this fingering'. But, like, you're not consciously drawing on all your previous conversations whenever you talk with someone and you don't think 'that conversation went well, time to add this to my corpus of conversations and retrain my "how to speak" module.'

I think it's beautiful that we'll never figure out exactly how learning works.

So I've seen this advice before and I do see it's value, but it doesn't quite work for me.

I know that sucking when you're new at something is expected and merely a step towards the goal, but that doesn't stop me from still feeling inadequate.

The knowing/feeling dichotomy is something I struggle a lot with, and I haven't quite found the solution to that yet.

IMO one of the super important things is not struggling with your feelings. Feeling inadequate is a natural process in sucking. It's a self-defense thing to keep your standing in the socially competitive atmosphere of human social dynamics. It's telling you that you look silly and you're taking a risk in doing this.

And that's okay! It's part of it. Comfort yourself with other things while you do the difficult thing of leaning new skills. That's sort of the whole process of self improvement.

well yes, but that's rather the point: I know that it's normal to feel inadequate, but that doesn't make it feel any less terrible.