Skill Is Skill, Not an Attitude or How You View Your Skill
A positive, can-do spirit is a great thing. It's no substitute for actually know what they hell you're doing though.
Excellence is not a skill, it is an attitude.
Ralph Morton
Horsehit.
[For the record, I quite like Ralph Morton’s website, The Daily Motivator.]
Attitude determines altitude. I hate that one, though it’s also true; to an extent.
Something about “attitude determines altitude” and the Marston quote just rubbed me the wrong way, like you can attitude yourself to success.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been exposed to too many folks whose positive attitude about their abilities did not match their actual abilities.
Or because of my current thrashing around as I hone/build my skills.
A positive attitude only gets you so far. After that, you gotta put in the work.
It reminded me of this Demotivational Poster from despair.com.
There are some things I’m just never going to be able to do — complex mathematics, throw a football like Drew Brees (hell, or Zack Wilson for that matter), run as fast as Usain Bolt, reach the top shelf — because I just don’t have the tools to do it.
Can’t Fly? Rule the Land
However, riffing off of the Ostrich there, I can fucking rule the land if I can’t attitude my wings hard enough to fly (or learn how to pilot an airplane or hot air balloon).
I’m not going to attitude my way to fixing my car’s engine if it breaks down. I’m not going to attitude my way to replicating a Gordon Ramsay dish. If my pipes break, I’m turning off the water and then calling a plumber (walking the aisles in Lowes and thinking, “I can do that” is a recipe for disaster).
Excellence takes time. Yes, of course, your mindset and attitude matter.
But.
Developing a skill is repetitive.
And can be dull.
Do you have the patience to grind it out day by day, making incremental improvements with no noticeable return until you become excellent at whatever it is you’ve chosen to do?
I think I had such a remarkably negative reaction to the quote because I had just been reading through posts on a blog I recently discovered, Stacking the Bricks.
One of the posts, Why Blacksmiths Are Better at Startups Than You, is about the British show Mastercrafts, which focuses on three people trying to learn a skill (blacksmithing, stonemasonry, and a few others).
In a nutshell, they all want to learn the skill, but want to learn it quickly. After some whining (or whinging, it is an English show after all) about how hard it is to do these things, they generally knuckle down and get to work.
Their initial attitudes are positive — that they’ll master the skill. Then that attitude ran into the brick wall of reality of actually learning to do the things.
Excellence and the Artistry of Hand-Blown Glass
As I read, I was reminded of Foster Holcombe, the glassblower at the Maryland Renn Fest.
Foster has been hand-blowing individual pieces for decades, a member of the art glass movement. The first time I went to a Renn Fest (1987/88) was just north of Houston when I was in high school (and I wish I had a photo of The Ogre, a dude on stilts dressed like an ogre with a fart machine). Wandering around the grounds, I found Foster tucked in the back and watched my first glassblower demonstration — 20ish minutes from molten mound of glass and color chips to wine glass.
I was amazed.
Fast forward to today; we (now joined by my daughters, who also enjoy the glass blowing) watch a demonstration within the first hour or so of going to the Maryland Renn Fest. [He moved to the Maryland Renn Fest the first year I went, 1995. His studio, Art of Fire, is in Gaithersburg, MD, which is where I lived for a while — the world is full of coincidences. Beautiful work, check it out at Art of Fire.]
What I’d never really thought about is how long it takes to make what he’s doing look effortless.
It is amazing the ease with which he creates a vase or a wine glass in 25 or so minutes. I’m not sure he’s better now than he was 30 years ago, but his movements are so precise and natural now that he exudes excellence and competence.
Over the past few years, as Foster has gotten closer to retirement, the demonstration is often by someone else from his workshop.
They’re good, but after having watched Foster for over 30 years, they’re just not quite as smooth (though Todd is nearly there now).
Way Past Time for Me to Knuckle Down
As this year closes, I’m planning for next year. Around three years ago, I realized a harsh truth: I’ve never devoted that level of effort to developing my own craft.
Since then, I have been . . . semi-focused on improving. But mostly I’ve been like that ostrich — wings have been flapping, but my ass hasn’t gotten off the ground.
I’ve gotten better at planning, I’m MUCH healthier (best shape of my life and have lost half of the 70 pounds of tonnage I need to drop), writing, and marketing. It’s been in fits and starts though.
I finally began taking intentional actions to correct that, especially by joining The Writing Cooperative.
I’ve been semi-wishing my way to success. Half-assing it by accumulating helpful resources. Those surely work because I possess them. Right?
You don’t get to wish your way to success.
If you don’t take daily, action-oriented steps, you have a dream, not a goal (much less a plan).
I’ve been told (and think, most days) that I’m a pretty good writer.
What I’ve never really done is sit down and think about writing.
That’s what I’ve been doing recently and will continue next year (and beyond).
It’s always going to be a journey. I hope I’m a little bit better at this tomorrow than today. And a LOT better next year than as I type this on November 30, 2023. By, knock wood, 2033, I hope to be leaps and bounds better.
Day.
By.
Day.
Excellence takes time.
Your attitude (supported by effective habits) will keep you focused and on task; learning and then honing a skill.
Practice and action will take you the rest of the way.
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