A couple of summers ago, my husband and I decided that we wanted to learn to play tennis.

To begin our journey, we and I obtained some used racquets and dead balls at a local shop and then headed down to the neighborhood courts, as far away from other humans as we could get.

Then, we started tapping the ball back and forth over the net. Trying to, anyway. The balls bounced wildly all over the court and into the net. Movements were clumsy and awkward on my part, overly aggressive and baseball-like on his. We laughed a lot.

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It happens so often and with such pleasing predictability that I know it to be part of the learning process now.

I find out that I got something wrong, and I instantly see the correct solution.

Luckily, because I’m not a bombardier, my errors don’t cause loss of life. I can relish the moment when testing or checking reveals my mistake and I am suddenly able to see what I didn’t see before.

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I recently took up rowing, enjoying a few mornings out on the water in a friend’s Cornish pilot gig.

Boating comes with its own specialized vocabulary — and its own fancy knots.

Our coxswain, Susan, is a patient and encouraging teacher. She was showing me how to secure the oars after one of our outings.

The sequence was long: The rope went under here, over there, around this, through that, and so on.

I had a moment of panic. I didn’t think I could learn this on the fly. I would need time and lots of repetition, preferably by myself. After all, it took me something like 45 minutes to learn to do a simple slipknot.

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“How long does it take to learn to play the guitar?”

I get this question all the time. Wanna guess what the answer is?

You guessed it: It depends. It takes a few weeks to a few years to become proficient, depending on how much effort you put in.

I also frequently get the question, “How long does it take to get good at the guitar?”

Now that is a really different question. The answer, for anyone asking it, is you never will.

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It's really pretty simple. If you want to succeed at something, whether it's learning an instrument or mastering fractions or running a marathon, you've got to just not quit.

Simple, but not easy, right? Here's what I've noticed in working as a teacher and coach across subject areas: 

When we think we are pretty good at something, we'll keep going until we have completed our objective.

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