The Value of Being an Amateur

The Value of Being an Amateur

I have a tendency to become interested in things rather quickly. Sometimes that interest lasts a few hours, sometimes a few weeks, and occasionally it becomes something I carry with me for years. There isn't always a particular reason for it. Something catches my attention, I start asking questions, and before long I've found myself considerably further down a rabbit hole than I originally intended.

One day it might be architecture, another day urban planning, woodworking, photography, or the mechanics of an airplane. I've spent hours researching things I have no intention of purchasing, studying places I may never visit, and learning about subjects that have virtually nothing to do with my professional life.

I don't consider any of that time wasted.

I've never been particularly concerned with whether an interest fits neatly into some larger plan. Sometimes I want to understand how something works. Sometimes I want to know why something exists. Other times, I simply want to see whether I can make something myself.

And once I've satisfied that curiosity, I might move on to something entirely different.

I think there's a tendency to view this kind of exploration as a lack of focus. We place considerable value on specialization, commitment, and developing expertise within a particular discipline. Those are valuable qualities, of course, but I don't think they should be prerequisites for participating in something.

There's an enormous amount of the world worth understanding, and I find the idea that we should limit ourselves to a few areas of expertise rather unappealing.

The expectation of expertise

There's an interesting distinction between being interested in something and being good at it. The two are often treated as though they should eventually converge, but I'm not convinced they need to.

I can appreciate architecture without being an architect. I can enjoy understanding how an aircraft operates without ever intending to become a pilot. I can spend an afternoon painting something that will never hang in a gallery, or attempt to build a piece of furniture that would probably be considerably easier to purchase.

None of these activities requires professional ambition to be worthwhile.

Part of this comes down to how we understand expertise. Modern society depends on people who dedicate years, sometimes decades, to mastering particular disciplines. I certainly wouldn't want an amateur performing open-heart surgery or engineering a suspension bridge.

But somewhere between recognizing the importance of expertise and celebrating specialization, we've started treating amateurism as something to overcome.

The word itself has become almost synonymous with incompetence.

Historically, however, amateur comes from the Latin amator, meaning lover. An amateur was someone who pursued an activity out of affection for it, rather than financial necessity.

I think there's something rather beautiful about that distinction.

An amateur isn't necessarily someone who lacks ability. They're someone whose relationship with an activity isn't defined by compensation or professional obligation.

You can become extraordinarily good at something and still remain an amateur.

And perhaps more importantly, you can be an amateur without aspiring to become anything else.

The freedom to begin

One of the more liberating aspects of being an amateur is that you're allowed to be terrible at what you're doing.

You're allowed to make something ugly. You're allowed to misunderstand something, change your mind, abandon a project halfway through, or discover that an interest you thought would last a lifetime was really just a passing fascination.

You can try something without needing to establish an identity around it.

I've never particularly understood the expectation that every interest should become a permanent fixture of someone's personality. You can enjoy running without becoming a runner. You can make art without becoming an artist. You can spend a month learning about astronomy and then move on to something entirely different.

The experience doesn't become less meaningful simply because you didn't continue.

I also think there's something valuable about approaching a subject without being particularly concerned with how much you already know.

When you're unfamiliar with something, you tend to ask questions that someone with more experience might not think to ask. Some of those questions will be obvious. Others might reveal assumptions that have become so familiar they're rarely reconsidered.

That doesn't mean an outsider necessarily understands a discipline better than someone who has devoted their life to it. More often than not, the opposite is true.

But I don't think curiosity needs to wait for competence.

There's a difference between respecting expertise and believing that expertise is required before you're allowed to participate.

And I think we sometimes confuse the two.

Knowing a little about a lot

We often hear the expression jack of all trades, master of none, usually as a criticism of people who spread their attention across too many disciplines.

There's certainly something to be said for depth. Expertise matters, and a superficial understanding of a subject shouldn't be confused with mastery.

But I think breadth has its own advantages.

Being interested in many different things gives you more ways to understand the same problem. You begin recognizing patterns between subjects that, on the surface, have very little in common.

An interest in architecture might lead to urban planning, which leads to transportation policy, which leads to economics, which eventually changes how you think about the neighborhood you live in.

A seemingly unrelated interest in photography might change how you understand architecture in the first place.

Business strategy has similarities to urban planning. Architecture involves questions of psychology and human behavior. Design is influenced by economics, culture, and technology. Even seemingly technical subjects can reveal something about how people make decisions.

The connections aren't always obvious when you're learning something. Sometimes they don't become apparent until years later.

And sometimes there is no connection at all.

That's fine too.

I don't necessarily want every interest I pursue to become a defining area of expertise. Sometimes I just want to know how something works, why it exists, or whether I could make something similar myself.

And once I've answered that question, I might move on.

I don't see that as a failure of commitment.

I see it as curiosity doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

The value of an outside perspective

There's another aspect of amateurism that I find particularly interesting: the ability to approach a discipline without being entirely shaped by its conventions.

Every field develops its own language, practices, assumptions, and ways of solving problems. These conventions often exist for good reasons. They're the result of accumulated knowledge and experience.

But they can also influence which questions people consider worth asking.

Someone who has spent their entire career working within a particular industry may naturally approach a problem differently from someone encountering it for the first time.

The newcomer might lack important context, misunderstand fundamental constraints, or propose something that has already been attempted unsuccessfully.

But they might also notice something that has become easy to overlook.

I think the most interesting ideas often emerge when different perspectives come into contact with one another.

An architect might learn something from a biologist. A business strategist might recognize a useful principle in transportation planning. Someone designing a website might borrow ideas from editorial publishing rather than conventional digital interfaces.

None of these connections requires abandoning the expertise that already exists within a discipline.

They simply require a willingness to look beyond it.

I don't think being an amateur automatically makes someone more creative, any more than being an expert makes someone less so.

But I do think there's value in preserving the freedom to approach unfamiliar subjects without immediately adopting all the assumptions that come with them.

Sometimes knowing less means having more to learn.

And I find that rather exciting.

Making things for no particular reason

This website is probably a reasonable example of what I'm describing.

I've spent a considerable amount of time thinking about how it should look, how information should be organized, what belongs on it, and what doesn't.

There are certainly practical reasons for having a personal website. It can showcase professional work, communicate experience, and make it easier for people to understand what I do.

But those aren't the only reasons I'm building it.

I also enjoy the process.

I like thinking about typography, structure, and how something as ordinary as a document can become an interesting design reference. I like experimenting with layouts and figuring out how to make things work.

And now, apparently, I'm writing essays.

I'm not a professional writer. I don't have a degree in literature or journalism, and I have no particular expectation that these articles will reach a large audience.

I simply have things I think about, and I wanted somewhere to put them.

Maybe someone will read them. Maybe they'll disagree. Maybe they'll introduce me to an idea I hadn't considered before.

Or maybe they'll sit here largely unnoticed.

I don't think that makes the exercise any less worthwhile.

What interests me about the process is that I don't need to establish myself as a writer or designer to enjoy either activity.

I can experiment with both, learn along the way, and decide for myself what I want the finished result to look like.

Being an amateur doesn't mean being indifferent to quality. You can care deeply about something without needing it to become your profession.

In some ways, that freedom might be what allows you to care about it in the first place.

Curiosity without an obligation

Somewhere along the way, we've developed a peculiar relationship with curiosity. We're encouraged to pursue our interests, but increasingly under the condition that those interests amount to something.

Learn a skill to advance your career. Start a hobby and turn it into a side business. Read a book to become more knowledgeable, preferably about something that makes you more competitive in the labor market.

I find that rather exhausting.

I have an MBA in finance and have spent much of my professional career working in marketing, growth, and business strategy. I understand the importance of measuring performance, allocating resources, and evaluating returns.

But I don't think those same expectations need to govern our relationship with everything we're interested in.

There's something rather contradictory about expecting our interests to be economically productive when so much creativity begins with people experimenting without any particular outcome in mind.

Someone starts taking photographs because they like the way light falls across a building. Someone learns to sew because they want to make something that doesn't exist in a store. Someone becomes fascinated by public transportation because they wonder why one city functions differently from another.

These interests might eventually become careers, businesses, or meaningful contributions to a field.

But they don't have to.

And perhaps more importantly, they don't need to begin with that intention.

There's a difference between creating something because you believe it has commercial potential and discovering commercial potential in something you genuinely enjoy creating.

The former starts with an outcome. The latter starts with curiosity.

Neither is inherently wrong.

But I think there's value in having interests that exist independently of what they might eventually become.

Remaining an amateur

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to become an expert, building a business around a hobby, or pursuing an interest with a specific goal in mind.

Ambition is valuable. So is discipline. And there are plenty of things in life that require both.

What I question is the assumption that every interest needs to follow that trajectory.

We often think of amateurism as a temporary stage. You're an amateur until you've accumulated enough experience, developed enough skill, or received enough recognition to become something else.

But perhaps amateurism doesn't always need to be something we graduate from.

Perhaps it's possible to develop considerable knowledge and ability while preserving the curiosity that made something interesting in the first place.

To continue asking questions. To remain open to unfamiliar ideas. To enjoy learning something without needing to demonstrate that you've mastered it.

I don't know whether any of my current interests will become something particularly significant. Some probably will. Most probably won't.

I'm comfortable with that.

Sometimes the value of learning something is simply that you now know it. The value of making something is that you made it. The value of trying something new is that, for a brief period, you experienced the world a little differently.

I'd rather remain curious about a hundred things than convince myself I need a professional reason to explore any of them.

After all, there's an awful lot in the world worth understanding.

And I don't think we need permission to be interested in it.