or, “I first called this Stage 1-3 but I could not bring myself to post a concept as miserably-named as Type I/II Error or Kahneman’s System 1 and 2”

It seems that most activities one chooses to do, broadly speaking, go through about 3 stages:

1. Newbie. You don’t like the thing yet. You can’t even do the thing, you feel like an impostor, you fall on your face, it’s not fun.
2. Journeyman. You can do the thing, kind of. You have to psych yourself up to go do it. You enjoy it, kind of, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little.
3. Surfer Dude. You just do it effortlessly. If anyone ever says “want to do X?” and you don’t have to be doing something else, you say hell yeah.

Obviously, it’s great to be a Surfer Dude! In as many activities as possible! Notice when you are that, and treasure it! If you have a chance to go from Newbie to Journeyman or Journeyman to Surfer Dude, take it!

How does one do that? I don’t know, and that’s a bummer. I think I’m a Surfer Dude in only a couple things: puzzles, some video games (like Slay the Spire), maybe cooking. Even in activities that I like and value, like biking, lifting, meditating, I’m Journeyman at best. And this suggests that it’s not about raw hours doing the thing: I’ve spent literally thousands of hours on some of these! How am I not a Surfer Dude yet? And puzzles was a pretty quick ascent to Surfer Dude; they are shaped just like my brain is.

Some hypotheses:

• it helps if it’s social. I’ve talked Slay the Spire with at least 3 groups of friends, for years, which helps it remain a Surfer Dude activity for me. I also really like Super Mario World, but nobody plays that anymore, so eh.
• it’s probably part innate? Like I mentioned, I ~instantly fell in love with puzzle hunts.
• it helps if it aligns with your self-image. like, I have friends who enjoy driving fast cars; that would be a long road to surfer-dude for me.
• relatedly, it helps if it makes you feel good about yourself. I didn’t actually instantly fall in love with puzzle hunts; I did them back in college and felt incompetent and never got beyond Newbie. But in my 30s, because of the social situation, and a little respect even from solving a puzzle here or there, I quickly got to Surfer Dude status there.

side notes

This is not about how good you are. If you suck at chess and lose constantly, but you love it, you can still be a Surfer Dude. Indeed, actual Surfer Dudes were not necessarily “the best surfers” - they just really like it. Of course, it tends to correlate, because if you really like doing the thing, you’ll probably get good at it.

I guess I should also bring up one more side stage: Addict. Maybe this is stage 3a. It’s just like Surfer Dude, but instead of High enjoyment, it’s Low. (the prototypical example is scrolling on social media, or bingeing bad TV, or gambling or smoking or whatever people get addicted to.)

This is also not a value judgment of the activities. Hell, you can be a Surfer Dude at reality TV. But the reason people don’t talk like a Surfer Dude about “low status” things like reality TV is not about the status, but that they tend to lead you to Addict, not Surfer Dude.