Teaser, you talk about "enough activity to develop [various skills]".

In my experience with extensive golf practice and a bunch of other stuff I got hooked on over the years, the first few hours of practice are the most productive, the most instructive and produce the largest improvements in terms of ability to perform (relative to baseline zero). A few hours won't make one an expert, but it will certainly make him better by a wide margin, wide enough to brag to his golf partners at least.

Now the point here is that the amount of activity that is enough to make it seem like we've improved is likely to be actually small. If we're talking fads, golf is king. Every week, nay, every day, there's some new fad about some fancy advice about some complex technique about some mysterious skill about...you get the picture. Nobody actually practices golf, except the pros. With every new thing, we all get excited and this fools us into thinking we've improved in some way. We haven't, not exactly, it's just that the systems that control learning also control pleasure, and it's so very easy to stimulate one to give the illusion we've activated the other. The hormone responsible here is dopamine.

The second point here is that we learn much more quickly when it's fun, and it's most fun when it's new because dopamine is highest when; we're learning, and learning something new. From an evolutionary point of view, this makes perfect sense, we don't have ample time to learn how to survive. We learn now, or we die. Those that live, pass on the quick-learn gene.

I don't want to brag but I figured out two sure-fire lessons that take only a few seconds to teach to anybody to produce instant positive and significant results on the spot. In golf, we call them tips, but I promise those are genuine lessons that bypass about 99% of all the golf BS and it goes straight to the crux.

Anyways, you see my point, it's about the first few hours we're exposed to something new.