This week I wanted to share a profound insight about learning skills that I’ve had while playing World of Warcraft (AliAbdaal#2149 on BattleNet if anyone wants to add me).
For context, one of the more popular things you can do in WoW is “Dungeons”. The idea is that you assemble a group of 5 people (you and 4 other players), and enter a dungeon where you work together to kill dangerous enemies (NPCs – non-player characters). A dungeon might take 30-40 minutes to complete. With your team of 5, you work your way through the dungeon, killing the dragons and monsters and soldiers trying to stop you, and you get rewarded with “loot” (weapons, armour etc) if you’re successful.
There are 3 types of role you can take when playing in these sorts of groups with other people – (a) tank, (b) healer, or (c) damage-dealer. A 5-person group will usually have 1 tank, 1 healer and 3 damage dealers.
The “tank” leads the group through the dungeon. Their job is to attack the enemies first, and make them attack him (or her) in turn. So for example, if there’s a group of 4 evil skeleton soldiers you need to kill, the tank goes up to them and starts hitting them first. The 4 soldiers then start hitting the tank back. The tank has heavy armour, a magical shield, and various abilities that help him withstand the damage that’s being pummelled his way, ideally without dying.
The healer’s job is… well, to “heal” the tank while the tank’s taking all this damage. And also to heal the damage that the rest of the group is taking because one of the 4 skeleton soldiers might be a skeleton mage or something who launches fireballs that hit everyone in the group (not just the tank).
And then 3 damage-dealers’ job is to… well, deal damage to the skeleton soldiers so that they die in a timely fashion so that you can complete the dungeon in the allotted time to get the maximum rewards at the end.
In my own journey of playing WoW on-and-off since 2008, I’ve played different “classes” that have had all 3 of these roles at different times. When I first got into WoW 2008-2011 (while I was in high school), I played a Warlock, a damage-dealer who uses fire and curses and demons and stuff to do damage to the enemies. A few years later, at university when I got back into it around 2017, I played a Monk who specialised in healing people with the power of nature and magical mists and stuff. But this time around, I decided I was going to be a Paladin tank.
The problem is that in many ways, being the tank is the hardest role in the group. There’s the basic skillset of knowing what all 30+ of your abilities do, how best to use them etc. But then there’s also the added requirement of leading the group – knowing the specifics of each dungeon inside-out so that you can lead the group through it in a safe, effective and fun fashion.
When I played a damage-dealer, there was minimal research I needed to do before each dungeon – yes it was vaguely important to know the main mechanics of the boss fights, but the general idea was “the tank leads us, I just maximise my damage on the enemies that are attacking him”. Easy enough.
When I played a healer, there was a bit more research I needed to do – knowing the damage profile of the dungeon was helpful, knowing when the enemies would be unleashing highly damaging abilities that I needed to save my most powerful healing abilities for etc. But broadly, the job was “follow the tank, and try to stop the group from dying”.
But now as a tank, to lead the dungeon well, I need to know which enemies are coming up, what order to attack them in, how many groups of enemies to cluster together, which route to take through the dungeon to be as efficient with the tight timer as possible, and a bunch more stuff. AND I need to be able to adjust all this on the fly depending on the composition of the rest of the group, and the experience level that the others have.
Okay, now to finally get to the point – this whole “tanking” thing has been (and continues to be) a very interesting experiment in what it takes to learn a new skill. And I’m mentioning it here, after all this questionable exposition about World of Warcraft, because I think there’s a lesson here that might be useful for your life too 😊
“What’s the lesson, for goodness’ sake?”, I hear you ask.
It’s going to sound trite if I just say it straight up, so I need to continue with more anecdote before we get there, sorry.
Basically, when learning a new skill, there’s the “theory” and then there’s the “practice”. There’s learning about how to do the thing, and then there’s actually doing the thing to put the theory into practice.
In my tanking journey, I watched a tonne of YouTube videos about the theory of tanking, and read a load of written guides about how to do it well, how to play my Paladin effectively, and how to get through each of the dungeons in the safest way. I thought I was pretty prepared.
But then I actually tried tanking a dungeon. And all the theory went out of the window, because I realised “oh shit this is what it’s actually like”. Despite all the videos I’d watched about the dungeon and about how to optimally use my abilities as a Paladin, when I was confronted with the stress of leading a group for the first time in a dungeon I’d never actually played before, and I started getting smacked by all the enemies I was supposed to be tanking, with my health bar dipping dangerously low from the first encounter, I felt suddenly overwhelmed.
I knew what to do, in theory. I knew what buttons I should be pressing to maximise my passive and active damage mitigation. I knew what enemy abilities I should be trying to get out of the way for, and which ones to soak up, and which ones to interrupt.
But knowing theoretically what needed to be done, and then ACTUALLY doing it during the game, was a totally different ball game. When the rubber met the proverbial road, when it was time to put my fingers where my eyes were (??), I totally choked.
On that first dungeon, the one I’d watched a dozen videos for, we got destroyed by the first group of enemies. We tried another couple of times, but the group quickly disbanded because it was obvious we weren’t getting anywhere. And it was mostly my fault. I failed at tanking, I failed at the dungeon, I failed at leading the group through it.
And it was exhilarating.
Theory vs Practice – The Learning Gap
This got me thinking about how we approach learning new skills in general. So many of us (myself included) fall into this trap:
- We decide to learn something new
- We consume a tonne of content about it
- We feel like we understand it pretty well
- We try it for real and realise we actually know nothing
It happens with everything – playing an instrument, public speaking, starting a business, learning to code… even trying to be more productive 🙃
The gap between knowing and doing is way bigger than we expect. And I think this gap is why so many of us give up on new skills before we’ve really given them a proper chance.
How to actually get good at stuff – the uncomfortable truth
After my first spectacular failure at tanking, I had a choice – either give up and go back to being a damage dealer (the easier option), or keep trying and accept that I was going to suck for a while.
I decided to keep going. I ran more dungeons. I failed more times. I got kicked from groups because I was so bad. But slowly, things started to click.
Now when I run a dungeon, I’m still not amazing, but I’m competent. I don’t panic when my health drops. I know which abilities to use when. I can lead groups through without wiping on the first pull.
And the thing is – none of that improvement came from watching more guides or reading more theory. It all came from the painful, embarrassing process of failing repeatedly and learning from each mistake.
I think the uncomfortable truth about learning anything new is this: You have to be willing to be bad at it for longer than feels comfortable.
When we start something new, we have this expectation that we should be decent at it relatively quickly, especially if we’ve done our homework. But that’s just not how skill acquisition works. The only way to bridge the gap between theory and practice is through deliberate, repeated practice – and that means being willing to suck for a while.
This is obviously a dumb example – “Ali learned to tank in World of Warcraft, cool story bro” – but I think it applies to pretty much everything worth doing.
Whether you’re:
- Starting a YouTube channel
- Learning to code
- Trying to become more productive
- Learning a martial art
- Starting a business
- Public speaking
- Learning a language
The principle is the same: you’ll never get good at it by just consuming content about it. You have to jump in and be bad at it first.
The best news is that most people give up during this “I’m terrible at this” phase. So if you can push through it while everyone else is quitting, you’ll automatically end up ahead of 95% of people who try.
I remember when I first started making YouTube videos. They were terrible. But I kept making them. And now, a few years, a thousand videos, and millions of views later, I’m not terrible anymore. But I had to go through that painful period of being bad at it first.
So if you’re learning something new right now and feeling discouraged because the reality doesn’t match the theory – keep going. That gap is normal. Everyone feels it. The people who get good are just the ones who keep showing up even when they suck.
Have a great week!
Ali xx
