Pursuit-Worthy Elements

One way to figure out which challenges (of all possible challenges) are worth pursuing is to gauge how difficult they are to perform, how desirable they are in terms of outcome, and how satisfying the process of attempting them might be.

I like to imagine each potential pursuit as a three-endpoint spectrum with those aforementioned attributes as labels.

This allows me to mentally plot something like learning to pilot a ship as significantly difficult, not terribly desirable (for me), and moderately satisfying (as the idea of knowing how to do this, even if I probably wouldn’t do it often, is decently appealing).

This can serve as a heuristic for how I invest my time, energy, and resources on activities—which I find helpful because while it can be relatively simple to weigh the benefits and downsides of buying a new possession (especially once you get good at pausing and assessing what a new potential acquisition will actually do for you and where your desire for it originates), it’s sometimes trickier to compare and contrast activity-oriented options, including those that would involve a significant amount of effort and attention.

I recently started taking CrossFit and ballet classes, and I decided on both (as opposed to all the other things on which I could be spending my time and money) because they each seemed to offer me the right kind of challenge for where I’m at and where I’d like to be going.

Both classes are difficult in the sense that they offer substantial physical challenges and unfamiliar techniques.

Both offer outcomes I’d like to accomplish: better mobility and flexibility, greater (and more balanced) strength, and different sorts of physicality-related disciplines.

And both are satisfying as practices; it’s not always enjoyable suffering through a million reps of something strainful or repeating a gawky movement until it’s reflexively graceful, but the process of facing such difficulties and slowly improving oneself until they’re no longer so daunting is immensely and consistently gratifying.

The raw difficulty of these challenges wouldn’t, unto themselves, be enough to keep me interested and invested, nor would simply wanting what’s on the other side of the requisite labors.

The periodic moments of gratification lining the path between where I am and where I hope to be would likewise prove insufficient (in isolation) to keep me happily coming back to face the frequent confusion, embarrassment, and soreness inherent in these sorts of pursuits.

In my experience, undertakings that combine all three elements most consistently lead me in a direction I want to go, along a path I’ll enjoy traversing for its own sake.

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