I Know Kung-Fu: Another Curmudgeonly Grump about Craft
Perhaps is because I’m getting old. Perhaps it’s because, having gone through 2.5 career changes and paid my dues/been schooled 2.5 times. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I found this Zen Habits article about
how to become amazingly great at something refreshing. I’ve been to so many places where people are going to “get digital” in 3 months, or pick up a new competency through a couple hires, or “spend a weekend” with something to plumb its depth and master its rhythms. I loved the setup to this article:
Very often you’ll see blog posts or books teaching you to “master” a skill in only 10 days, or 3 days … in fact, it used to be 30 days but the time frame to master something seems to be shrinking rapidly.
I’ve even seen tutorials claiming to teach a skill in just a few hours. Pretty soon we’ll be demanding to know how to do something in seconds.
Instant mastery of skills and knowledge! Hey presto!
Unfortunately, the reality is something a little less magical. Or maybe that’s a fortunate thing.
We are definitely living in an age where we expect greater results for less effort - everything from getting vitamins in our candybars, teeth whitener in our gum, weight loss while we sleep, etc.
The challenge specifically in our profession is that so much of what we need to be experts about hasn’t been around 6 years, and what has been keeps changing on you.
Confidence and comfort in the digital space comes across as expertise to our clients. It’s been happening this way for so long, that not only do they believe we’re experts, but we do too. How many other professions have people in their 30’s with executive level titles?
You could argue that the only thing that we’re really expert at is “change”.
I say all this not as a criticism of our industry - but more of the reality. For the moment we are the best prophets, guides and mediums to chart a course into the infinite unknown.
[…] I continue to be crotchety about generalism and the speed with which people think they can learn to be something (see crotchety posts here, here, and here. Here too. Oh, and here. God, do I ever stop? Well, no, but this one here isn’t grumpy.). Listening to Studio 360’s podcast about Moby-Dick today (while I was engaged in the years-long journey of becoming a better cook — in this moment by trying to improve my chicken stock and mushroom barley soup), there was a surprisingly great interview with Ray Bradbury. Why surprising? First, because, despite my love of SF and other genre fiction, I tend not to expect profundity from SF writers. Second, having never read Bradbury, I assumed whatever acclaim he gets is because of the ideas behind and the clever titling of Fahrenheit 451, not for any skill as a writer. (I need to make that right and at least buy, if not actually read, something of his on my Kindle.) Third, it’s just such a nice way of putting something I and the voices in my head are often on about that my head snapped up and I almost cut off the tip of my left index finger when he said it. […]