Why I’ve stopped taking aim at shifting goalposts

I have an insatiable curiosity. I gobble up knowledge. I hanker after skills.

But there is a caveat. I’m done learning about things that keep on changing. Life’s too short.

I’ve come to understand that there are two types of learning. Or two categories of skills, if you like. One is a delight and makes you feel like a wise, rounded individual. The other seems wilfully designed to drive you up the wall.

First up, there are the skills fundamentally connected to the real world. The kinds of things generations of humans have learned and passed on. Things that stay useful for life, because they stay relevant. The fundamentals of cooking. The essentials of keeping a vegetable garden. How to ride a bicycle. The art of catching a fish. Speaking a new language. Catching a ball. Writing articles people want to read. Lets call these Type 1 skills.

'How to protect your child from a dingo' is a Type 1 skill (own photo, Fraser Island, 2012)

Then comes the second type of skill. Type 2 is an insiduous, frustrating category that’s snuck up on us as the world started becoming ever more digital without any of us ordinary folk getting a vote on the matter. These are the skills that you can learn but will quickly become obsolete. Finding your way around the latest app or your new smart TV. Mastering hashtags for some social media platform that’ll be a laughing stock in a few years. Working out how to rank well in Amazon’s book rankings algorithm. Knowing what the heck I need to do to get a line break between the caption above and this paragraph.

If you think about it, most of us spend ludicrous amounts of time on Type 2 skills. Many of us are compelled to do so by our work. Every time you start a new job, there’s some new time-tracking software to learn. Or some marvellous project management tracker. Right? Even basic tools like word processers are never static, insisting you stay on top of your game with various versions and updates. For which pop-up menus are guaranteed to nag at you just when you’ve got urgent Type 1 skill work to be doing.

And heaven help you if you work in, say, search engine optimisation or digital advertising. Your entire working life is tearing up what you learned last week and chasing some new trend. It’s Kafka-esque, really. No wonder our mental health is shot to pieces!

And even if your career spares you the joys of chucking your hard-won knowledge and skills in the bin all the live long day, does your government? Your children’s school? Your energy company? Your supermarket? Your social group? The public transport network in a foreign city? Even fun and travel always seems to involve learning a new app that may or may not last, and which you may or may not ever need again.    

Some people – tech utopians, young folk, geeks, workaholics, psychopaths – aren’t bothered by the relentless shifting of goalposts. Maybe if you’re a digital native, you don’t consider throwing away so much knowledge, so often, a monumental waste of time. Maybe you’ll still be gagging to discover the latest new platform and the coolest new features when you’re a grandparent.

I can only speak for myself when I say that ain’t me. I’m done with Type 2 learning.

Self-publishing in particular has opened my eyes to the folly of it all. It’s a world crammed with labour-saving software that will help you nail down your Kindle Store categories, new platforms to which you can upload for exciting, untapped audiences, and shiny social media platforms where you can build a connection with this or that type of reader. But Amazon will change the category rules such that you (and the developer) will have to revisit the software. Constantly. Audiences keep moving around while publishing platforms fiddle with their offerings. Social media platforms burn bright for a short while, then they’re gone.

See what I’m getting at? You’re never done. You can never sit back like the ferriers, bakers or shoemakers of yore and think to yourself, “I’ve done my time as an apprentice and now I am a master of my trade. And I’m only going to get better.”

Okay, yes, you can still be an expert in a trade as dynamic as self-publishing, SEO or social media marketing. But only if that’s your paid, full-time thing to the point that staying on top of every development is doable and viable. And only if you can make peace with your skill being a zero-sum game. One where new knowledge doesn’t augment what you already have, but replaces it.

If your life goes the way mine has, though, you’ll realise one day that there’s just no satisfaction in learning stuff that keeps on evaporating. In fact, it’s a special kind of mental torture. And this is something that the gurus churning out how-to content hope we're not going to notice.

Well, I've noticed it now.

Which is why, for the sake of my sanity, I’m now sticking to Type 1 skills as much as possible. Current projects include learning Hungarian, growing winter vegetables, birdwatching, reading more history books, expanding my portfolio of tomato-free salad recipes, the finer points of fixing bicycle puntures, and working up the courage to use a drill.

And as for that line break? There was a time when I would obsess over it, perfectionist that I am. But what was once a Type 1 skill - leaving out a line of foolscap; pulling the thingy across on a typewriter - is now, in humanity's infinite wisdom, well and truly in the realms of Type 2. So I've made peace with leaving it alone. I trust you'll understand.