In Beginners, Tom Vanderbilt argues that you’re never too old to learn something new – and enjoy it
- The book highlights the pluses of being a dilettante, encouraging especially the middle-aged to dabble in hobbies and learn new skills to keep mind and body young and efficient
- Vanderbilt’s impetus for adding to his abilities arose from escorting his young daughter to her various classes and realising he could join her in certain activities
Beginners
by Tom Vanderbilt
Knopf
Malcolm Gladwell popularised, and oversimplified, the notion that 10,000 hours constitutes the “magic number of greatness”. That investment of time and effort, he argued in his 2008 bestseller Outliers, is imperative for anyone hoping to master anything from a sport to computing to music. The message? That success is far from arbitrary; it requires work.
But that’s assuming you want to make sacrifices and be an expert. What if you cannot afford the equivalent of 416 24-hour days of “deliberate practice” to achieve prowess? What if you’re content simply to dabble? Tom Vanderbilt asks those questions in Beginners, which should motivate especially the middle-aged to learn for the joy of it and gain from its transformative power – tempting rewards promised in the subtitle.
“Being a beginner can be hard at any age, but it gets harder as you get older,” writes Vanderbilt (whose previous book, 2008’s Traffic, about the way we drive, made it to Gladwell’s must-read list). Besides, who among the harried feels entitled to hobbies with little or no connection to work?
The New York-based tiger dad’s impetus for adding to his abilities arose from escorting his young daughter to her various classes – piano, soccer, tae kwon do, choir, skateboarding, coding, athletics, indoor climbing, chess – and realising he could join her in certain activities instead of remaining on the sidelines. That they were beginners separated by four decades promised interesting results.
One advantage of being a perpetual beginner, Vanderbilt argues, is you’re training your brain to be more efficient every time you begin to pick up a new skill. And learning several skills at the same time taps into the brain’s plasticity – its ability to change to adapt to new challenges.