Focusing on low-hanging fruit

Most of us have a routine—you go to work, and if you have a hobby, it’s probably the same one you’ve had for years. In business, there is a term called “return on investment.” This is used to assess how profitable an investment or business strategy is—what do I get in return for every dollar spent?

This way of thinking is useful in business, but we think it’s applicable in other areas as well. If you want to be as well rounded as possible, where do you think you’ll get the greatest return on your investment—doing something you’ve done a million times before? How about if you do something you’ve never tried? Most of us never try something new. We get good at something, and then we stay in the same lane for years.

Learning something new can feel painful and frustrating, but what we seem to forget is that the possibility for improvement is so much greater if you suck at something. You probably won’t make the Olympics, but you’ll be a thousand times better than if you never tried. Even if you don’t get good at the new skill, you’ll have a deeper understanding of an entirely new topic or area of life—which will make you a more useful and nuanced person.

The cool thing is that this perspective works in all areas of life—just find a thing that you’re interested in, and make the dive. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sport, music, art, computer programming, or something else entirely. Find something you like and study and practise.

Studies have shown that brain plasticity and health can be greatly improved if you learn new skills. It was believed that we lost the ability to learn new things with age—and the research still reflects this—but there seems to be another variable in play. We lose the ability to learn because we stop learning. As the saying goes “use it or lose it.” Like with everything else, your body adapts to the demands you impose on it. If you introduce it to a repetitive environment, the brain will crystalize and get good at the repetitive nature of the demands you put on it.

But there seems to be a downside to this way of life, besides the inability to learn new stuff. In the same way  our sedentary lifestyle damages our bodies, so does a repetitive lifestyle hurt our brain. In fact, it’s worse—because it’s a double sandwich. The average brain will suffer from a suboptimal cardiovascular system and the repetitive input of a sedentary lifestyle—leading to all kinds of degenerative brain conditions. 

But this is where the upside is. You can become more insightful, useful, healthy, and have a more functional brain—if you focus on low-hanging fruit and learn new stuff. A really interesting study was conducted, where the participants learned to juggle three balls. Brain scans were used to measure progress. After the study was over, the participant's skill development and brain adaptations were measured. The cool thing is that there was no correlation between skill development and brain adaptation.

All the participants got the same benefits, even if they didn’t learn to juggle the balls. The conclusion, therefore, was that it’s the act of practising a new skill that is beneficial, and not the speed of skill acquisition that is important.

So, go out there and practice that thing you always wanted to do, and get all the benefits—no matter if you become great at it or not. The reward is in the doing (or the attempting to do).

Until next time

Scott and Lennart