I love learning. Love it. There’s nothing I like more than being able to do a new thing reasonably well and the process of learning and the feeling of progress is very satisfying.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a ‘knack’ to most things once they are boiled down to essentials. To me, getting the knack of something is that moment where the new thing just sort of clicks.

One example of this for me was when learning a second language (French): the realization that you need to ‘fake’ an accent in order to pronounce the words correctly. I say ‘fake’ because of course it’s not your natural accent or way of speaking - you need to act a little bit, almost pretend to be someone else, if you really want to nail it and have a hope of passing as a native speaker.

Occasionally though, I will fall into the trap of thinking that this applies everywhere, and that everything has a knack or secret trick. Sometimes this is not at all the case and there is no secret or perfect way of doing things. Sometimes you just need to lift harder, power through, or otherwise do something that will never be perfect in order to get something done.