Dullness and The Stone

I'm making dinner. Cooked rice and butter are snapping and crisping in the big cast iron skillet. Another skillet holds sliced carrots, a bit of water, salt, and pepper. I'll add butter and spice to that in a bit. Soon I'll cook eggs to go over the rice, douse it with a few shakes of soy sauce and a bit of sesame oil. Our version of fried rice.

While I simmered dried rice in water, I tried once again to sharpen my knife with a stone and oil.

I'm not very good at it.

There are devices for sharpening knives. Friends say they work well. I should probably get one, but I won't. I want to learn how to use a stone and sharpen by hand. I'll likely ruin my knife in the process and have had to work with a knife far from properly sharp, but I want to learn how to do this.

I've watched videos and read tutorials, but sharpening a knife is best learned through a teacher present in the room, who corrects the mistakes I make.

In this, I'm a poor teacher and student at the school of trial and error. I require so many trials to figure out even one of my errors. Learning to refill my fountain pen, I wore ink for years. Sharpening knives, I may not even have the right stone and I'm sure there are whole levels of the process I'm not yet imagining.

However, I sharpened the knife best I know how. Cutting carrots afterward, there was no denying I'd given the knife a better edge than it had and a better edge than I could have given it last year. I'm learning something.

Why not just get the device that will sharpen things properly? Why not go with what works?

I like working things out and, much as I complain, I like the practice of learning through trial and error. I like developing skills even when no one will notice. The knife isn't talking.

There are easy, efficient ways to do things, and then there is oiling a stone and drawing the knife against it, working out the proper angle and best motion. There are the ways that others do things and there are the ways I choose, ways that take me against the current and into strange new worlds.

Later, when the family comes to the table, we will all eat. The food will taste good to all of us — it's one of our favorite meals — but it will taste even better to me as recall the knife slicing through each carrot, the shine on the stone, the ways in which this dull boy is a tad sharper now, and how much sharper I might become.

Prototyping

Yesterday, I had to learn something big. There was no way around having to figure it out other than quitting my job. That hardly seemed a reasonable response to a challenge. Learning might suck, but it beats the hell out of running away, so I worked my way into it.

I did not figure everything out or get it all right. I figured a couple things but also ran into new questions and challenges. So it goes. I know better what's left to learn and have vague ideas how to get there. Mostly, I need to keep going.

I made some mistakes too. A staff member asked about doing something. I said to go ahead despite a hazy doubt somewhere in my mind. An hour later I realized the mistake. Damn it. I'll redo things today, clean up my mess. No big deal, but it reminds me what sucks about learning, especially when I'm in prototype mode.

The first time through, things are terribly difficult. I don't know enough to do well, don't know enough to even realize mistakes until after I've made them. Then, seeing how I've screwed up, I want to quit. Instead, as Steely Dan wisely instructs, I go back, Jack, do it again, wheels turning round and round. Next time, I notice a few more mistakes, make some new ones, and am almost as frustrated as the first time. Almost. I'm still in prototype stage. The thing works, maybe just barely. I'm nowhere near finished and can't know how many iterations I'll need. Eventually, I'll build something that works, something on which I'm making refinements, something natural and elegant.

I want to get to that end right away if not sooner, but there's no bypassing the practice, prototyping, and iterative creation of systems. It's slow and frustrating work, but I've yet to find another way into the promised lands. The sooner I make that first prototype and open myself to making mistakes through which I learn (no matter how much that sucks), the sooner I'll develop expertise, comfort, and a working machine.

In other words, I need to keep going.

The prototype functions, albeit with sparks, smoke, and impending failure. I see how to trim the edges, realign the pieces, and employ new materials in the next prototype. That one will probably still might smolder, maybe explode, but it will lead to the next prototype and someday to something that will seem to have sprung full-form as though by magic.

Today there will be another big thing to learn and more mistakes to be made, but today might also be the day something works. Let's go find out.

Learning Sucks

I was a teacher for twenty-four years. I've been a student all my life. I'm in a new job at which I know only three percent of what I need to know, but I'm learning. All of which gives me the standing to say the following:

Learning sucks, man.

The guy who had my job before helps and advises me more than I deserve. He points out the trip wires and shows how to excel. But I haven't learned enough to make the best use of his advice. Today, I learned things, got slapped around by events enough to understand one of his big lessons. It's great to understand, but it totally sucked learning this way.

I've got a great team at work. My deputy is smarter than me in most every way, thoughtful, and knows thirty-eight times more than I do about the job. She patiently teaches and helps me get things figured out. She's wonderful, but it totally sucks having to learn all the stuff she knows, asking her to teach me again and again.

My friend in a very similar job warned me about this gig. She's phenomenal at the job and makes it look easier than it is. She said I wouldn't sleep for a year, that I'd be thinking about it all the time, but that I would be good because I learn fast. She forgot to say how much learning sucks.

Okay, okay, learning doesn't really suck, but it feels that way. My coach says I'm doing fine. Board members, staff, and colleagues say so too. My wife says I'm doing fine and she knows me better than anyone, but I still feel unprepared and slow. Today I learned an important lesson about the job and sensed how much I still don't know. Every day I'm learning and every day learning sucks because I want to know already.

It's after nine o'clock at night. Good music is playing, the air conditioner is cooling the bedroom, and the alarm is set for five AM so I can get up and learn some more. Learning will still suck and I'll still feel unequal to the tasks, but here's the thing:

I love this work, love the challenges, and, truth to tell, I even love the learning even though it totally sucks.

Growth Mindset

Tesla, electric car company of my dreams, released a software update this week. Teslas are more like mobile phones than typical cars in that they run as much on software as on motors. Tesla controls are on a giant touchscreen in the console instead of dedicated buttons and switches installed at the factory. Tesla can radically update the car long after it has left the factory. They can also make nearly infinitesimal changes as was the case this week.

The software update changed how the cabin fan operates. When the car senses there is no passenger, it shuts off the passenger-side fan, saving a tiny amount of battery power.

The issue people think they have with electric cars is battery range. The big gasoline-car makers push range anxiety as a big deal, but the Tesla Model 3, even in its Standard package has a range of 250 miles. The Long Range version gets 322 miles to a charge. I can't recall the last day I drove more than 300 miles.

Tesla is fanatical about extending battery range. Rather than wait for new models or only making tweaks at the factory, they extend the range of the car through software updates such as the one this week about which one person said, "I'm sorry, but the amount of energy you're saving is so low, I'm surprised either of them bother. You [sic] looking at maybe 10 watts on average, probably less. It'll increase the range by feet, not miles" (emphasis mine).

Feet not miles. Why does Tesla bother?

It's because this is a matter of craft and a statement of purpose. This is one change of thousands made throughout the design of Teslas. Each adds up but each also promotes a culture of craft that values efficiencies earning every extra foot of range. Devotion to craft stresses a cumulative way of thinking. One small software patch is not the end of consideration but a part of a much larger picture in which the smallest changes matter.

Before anyone gets to thinking I'm a blind fanboy, I understand Tesla is a flawed company led by a deeply flawed man, but I'm still want a Tesla and am devoted to the idea that small details matter even as I know that Tesla misses many details. Seeking perfection is someone else's job. I'm interested in developing craft.

I wrote the first draft of this on pages I print on the backs of used paper, pages I designed over the course of six years, making tiny changes. I tweak that design still and expect to keep changing it. The page design makes my thinking more efficient. I'm not saying it makes writing the pages more efficient. I'm in no hurry to move to the next thing. I'm interested instead in extending the thought I have through the thoughts writing can create.

The second draft I typed in Writer: The Internet Typewriter rather than Word. While Word allows for seemingly infinite formatting, Writer allows for none, not even bold or italics. Eliminating Word's distractions is big change, extending my thinking by miles. A much smaller change is taking Writer full screen, an increase of feet not miles that I'll take knowing something much greater goes on under the hood of my writing machine because of such small changes.

Under the hood, huh?

Under the hood of a Tesla, there's no engine, just space for storage. That kind of radical change results from a thousand infinitesimal changes and a craft mindset focused on continuous improvement. It comes from the idea that small change matters not just to extend the range of one vehicle but the range of an entire car company and the process by which creative things come to life.