Ruining the fun part

I’m okay just putting it in gear and making it go. (Image by Markus Thomas)

When I was growing up in Maine, channel 19 was the French channel, broadcasting presumably for the Québécois.

As a child, back in the 80s and 90s when there was a dearth of entertainment, I would try watching this channel now and again. Each time, I grew bored after just a few minutes. I wasn’t going to accidentally pick up French just by being in the room while a dubbed soap opera was on the TV screen. There would need to be a greater investment of time and effort.

We know that we can’t learn through osmosis — that simply being exposed to facts and information isn’t enough to make sense of them, and watching someone perform a skill does not result in being able to do it oneself. What’s less obvious is that a high level of effort in a particular area — even a high level of competence — doesn’t always translate to mastery. Learning about a topic or grasping the particulars of how to execute a skill will not automatically give you an understanding of the underlying system, even if you practice relentlessly.

For example, I could be a dazzling pianist, capable of sensitive interpretations of advanced repertoire, without ever understanding music theory or being able to compose a piece myself. I could read hundreds of masterpieces of literature and never have the wherewithal to plot my own novel. And I could cook thousands of meals without ever becoming an expert chef.

The people we consider to be “talented” tend to be those who have risen above the mechanics of their vocation to be not just replicators, but creators. They don’t just follow a pattern or a recipe; they aren’t merely competent craftspeople, but artists. How does one get to that point?

More practice isn’t going to do it. Greater competence at working within the system will only get you so far. You’ve got to study and master the system itself. You must do the hard, uncomfortable work of analyzing, deconstructing, and testing the limits of the framework that you’ve relied on. You might even have to systematically break it to see what happens. For a while, you have to ruin the fun part of your cherished area of expertise.

As a knitter, I have a bit of sweater anxiety — it’s scary to spend hours upon hours knitting something that might not fit properly or that I might not like when it’s done. I’m forging ahead anyway. I’ve already completed one sweater this season, which I’m wearing right now, and a second lacks only sleeves and should be finished in a couple of days. I’ve whiled away peaceful evenings knitting away while participating in conversations, listening to books and podcasts, and watching TV here and there.

And that’s my point. I can knit automatically, but only if I’m following a pattern. Creating my own pattern requires a lot more thought (and a bunch of math). If all I want out of knitting is mindless stress relief that yields a hat or socks or a sweater, then I shouldn’t design my own pieces. If I do want to design my own pieces, I will never get there just by following someone else’s and knitting without thinking. The experiences couldn’t be more different.

However, within this painful truth is a shortcut to becoming a creator. Mastering all of the existing piano repertoire is not a prerequisite for composing your own works. Reading every novel isn’t a requirement for plotting your own. And I don’t need to knit every sweater to design my own. We can trim a couple of decades off of the learning process if we understand the kind of practice that matters. If we give ourselves sufficient challenge instead of coasting, we will grasp the system more quickly.

When I began to learn to play the guitar, I wrote my own songs after only a few weeks. Instead of playing songs from the sheet music, I put my energy into listening to songs to figure out the chords. As I did this, I began to see the patterns and map out the underlying system that made the chords go together. From there, writing my own songs was easy.

I could have done this kind of analysis in physics or calculus, too. I didn’t. There, I took the easy way out, following a procedure instead of understanding the process. Unsurprisingly, my results were mediocre. And that’s okay. We get to choose where we will invest our energy. We don’t have to have a deep understanding of every system. I bake cookies about once every three years — I’m probably always going to follow a recipe. And if things go wrong, I’m not that interested in finding out why…I’ll just eat the slightly burned or overly sweet cookies.

On the other hand, there’s something about knitting — and music, and writing, and teaching, and entrepreneurship, and leadership — that leads me to want to go under the hood and see the inner workings for myself. My question for you, then, is this: Are you getting the results you’re looking for in your chosen pursuits? Might you be poking around trying to make sense of something that you’d rather hand off to a professional? Or could it be that you are pursuing competence when you really want to transcend it? Or do you just want to go through the motions for your own enjoyment?

There’s no wrong path here. But it’s helpful to know which one you want to be on. You don’t need to ruin the fun part with theory. But it might be just the thing you’ve been looking for.