Early this summer, one of my new Maryland friends introduced me to the world of guitars. Yes, I knew what a guitar was before… but no one had ever showed me the basics: This is a string, and that’s a fret. Here’s a chord, and you can play.

After a few weeks of practicing on my friend’s guitar, I bought my own acoustic — a Seagull S6 “Original” — so that I can continue to learn and play back at school. At first, I was intimidated by the guitar; I wanted to jump in and play something impressive and difficult, but that’s impossible without understanding the basics. Eventually, I realized I would be wiser (and learn faster) to begin at the beginning, learn two chords, and go from there.

Isn’t this how I learned to program? Little bits first, and then little bytes… If I had started with a giant project, I probably would never have gotten past the ABC’s.

Beyond the intrinsic joy in learning, I’m always excited that in starting to learn something new you usually learn more, faster, than when you’re continuing to learn something old. I’ve been programming for ten years; there’s still plenty I don’t know, but an hour of practice isn’t going to make me much better. On the other hand, an hour of practice on guitar will put me a lot closer to the next level (i.e., playing in a way that doesn’t hurt the ears of sensitive people around me).

I’m not saying we shouldn’t pursue expertise and 10,000 hours — there is so much reward in mastery.

But if you want to stretch your mind and find joy in a forgotten corner of the cosmos, pick something new.