It's Great to Suck at Something
The Unexpected Joy of Wiping Out and What It Can Teach Us About Patience, Resilience, and the Stuff that Really Matters
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Discover how the freedom of sucking at something can help you build resilience, embrace imperfection, and find joy in the pursuit rather than the goal.
What if the secret to resilience and joy is the one thing we’ve been taught to avoid?
When was the last time you tried something new? Something that won’t make you more productive, make you more money, or check anything off your to-do list? Something you’re really, really bad at, but that brought you joy?
Odds are, not recently.
As a sh*tty surfer and all-around-imperfect human Karen Rinaldi explains in this eye-opening book, we live in a time of aspirational psychoses. We humblebrag about how hard we work and we prioritize productivity over play. Even kids don’t play for the sake of playing anymore: they’re building blocks to build the ideal college application. But we’re all being had. We’re told to be the best or nothing at all. We’re trapped in an epic and farcical quest for perfection. We judge others on stuff we can’t even begin to master, and it’s all making us more anxious and depressed than ever. Worse, we’re not improving on what really matters.
This book provides the antidote. (It’s Great to) Suck at Something reveals that the key to a richer, more fulfilling life is finding something to suck at. Drawing on her personal experience sucking at surfing (a sport she’s dedicated nearly two decades of her life to doing without ever coming close to getting good at it) along with philosophy, literature, and the latest science, Rinaldi explores sucking as a lost art we must reclaim for our health and our sanity and helps us find the way to our own riotous suck-ability. She draws from sources as diverse as Anthony Bourdain and surfing luminary Jaimal Yogis, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Jean-Paul Sartre, among many others, and explains the marvelous things that happen to our mammalian brains when we try something new, all to discover what she’s learned firsthand: it is great to suck at something. Sucking at something rewires our brain in positive ways, helps us cultivate grit, and inspires us to find joy in the process, without obsessing about the destination. Ultimately, it gives you freedom: the freedom to suck without caring is revelatory.
Coupling honest, hilarious storytelling with unexpected insights, (It’s Great to) Suck at Something is an invitation to embrace our shortcomings as the very best of who we are and to open ourselves up to adventure, where we may not find what we thought we were looking for, but something way more important.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rinaldi (The End of Men), publisher of HarperWave, delivers a goofy yet wise celebration of taking joy in passions instead of talents. She begins by making "a case for discomfort" and the life-affirming practice of "transcending our usefulness." In lighthearted, introspective prose, Rinaldi shares how her love of surfing something she has never been particularly good at inspired her to buy land in Costa Rica sight unseen, helped her through cancer treatment, and has been a source of bonding with her son (even through serious surfing-related injuries sustained by both of them). Rinaldi stresses the positive health of novelty, curiosity about the new, and living in the steep part of an ever-growing learning curve, which, she writes, research has shown to increase creativity and brain health. But her real focus is on the release of the illusion of control. For Rinaldi, current trends that elevate hyperspecialization have created a culture of imbalance and stress. To make her points, she brings in ideas of others writers, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Anthony Bourdain, and Edward Lorenz, to support the "suck at something ethos." Rinaldi's seductive lessons and "embrace of messiness and incompleteness" will inspire readers looking to spark personal change.
