Finding Limits and Pushing the Edge
Speed Limit: Prima facie, reasonable and prudent.
(This article is part of an on-going series dedicated to developing Agile mastery. Each post offers value to students on this journey, however, there is an advantage to those who start at the beginning.)
The real artist has no pride. Unfortunately he sees that his art has no limits. He feels obscurely how far he is from the goal. While he is perhaps being admired by others, he mourns the fact that he has not yet reached the point to which his better genius, like a distant sun, ever beckons to him. - Ludwig van Beethoven
When I first began working wood as a craft I wanted to master, the limits were easy to find. I needed space in which to work. I needed a good saw, a good plane, and a decent piece of wood to work on. As I worked on simple projects - cutting boards, for example - the projects revealed skills and tools I needed. I got better edges with a router than a hand file if I were working with walnut, but not if I were working with pine. A smoother finish with an orbital sander than a sanding block if working a large space, but not for edges. I certainly could have kept my tool set simple and lived the life of a purist to the craft. But that wasn't my goal. I wanted to master all sorts of projects - everything from cutting boards to Tori gates to fine furniture.
Adding tools to my shop didn't preclude the need for understanding the fundamentals. In fact, it made mastering them all the more important. I've found that perfecting my skills with files, chisels, hand planes, scrapers, and sanding blocks has given me a much greater appreciation for using the more efficient power tools in my shop. More importantly, the more I continue to work on the fundamentals with hand tools, the better able I am to understand the wood I'm working with. The type, weight, grain, and even the smell influence the wood I select and how I plan the cuts.
Unless you're doing work that could easily be done by a machine, this attitude about fundamental skills applies to any job or profession. Every job offers an opportunity to develop new or refine existing skills with the basics. In fact, it's a good idea to intentionally revisit the fundamentals for the express purpose of reaffirming your understanding. Select a woodworking project that can be done exclusively with hand tools. Dedicate a week to practice nothing but scales on a musical instrument. Revisit the basic set of rules for estimating work. The key is to not stay there too long. Know when to move on and continue challenging yourself at the edge of your chosen craft.
How do you know you've mastered the fundamentals and you're ready to move out of your comfort zone?
A lot depends on the quality of your mentor. As the story goes, Leonardo da Vinci's mentor wasn't the kind to withhold praise and expressing when he was impressed with this student's inventiveness. This enabled Leonardo to expand beyond his comfort zone with confidence and surpass his Master's capabilities.
Unfortunately, this type of transmission isn't as common as it needs to be. Too many mentors, coaches, and masters have become addicted to the buzz of being "the sage on the stage." The apprentice is then left to their own devices for taking the first steps - usually out of fear - toward venturing out on their own path.
Since the latter is more common, are there any objective signals in the world that can let us know when it's time to step across the line into unfamiliar territory. Here's the paradox: You won't known until you begin to move away from the basics, until you begin to bend the rules a little, experiment, and explore. And here are the keys:
Make this move deliberate.
Don't change many things, change just a known few.
Have a plan for what you're going to change and why.
Evaluate your results. If possible, have others evaluate your results.
People driven by a pursuit that puts them on the edges are often not on the periphery, but on the frontier, testing the limits of what it is possible to withstand and discover. - Sarah Lewis
Long term success comes in increments. There are counter examples to this principle that make for plenty of Hollywood fodder, but they serve more as an assertion of survivorship bias than a strategy for success. We can't control luck, but we can choose how, when, and where we spend our time.
If you have any questions, need anything clarified, or have something else on your mind, please use the comments section or email me directly.
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Photo by Kerin Gedge on Unsplash