Stagnation
I’ve had a driving license since Form 6. My parents wanted me to be independent and drive myself to school. What this means is that at this point — minus a couple of weeks when I’ve been on holiday — I’ve been driving daily for more than two decades. I even spent a couple of months driving around a sprawling city as a Grab driver. In terms of hours clocked-in, how many would that be? At least twenty thousand hours? With those kinds of credentials, I should be considered an “expert” in driving, right? How about those who are older than me and have been driving even longer? Are they considered “experts”?
Unfortunately, I don’t think we are. At least I don’t personally think we are. Because we aren’t deliberately trying to get better at driving every time we drive. What we’re doing is maintaining a baseline competency of those skills and committing it to muscle memory. Those who read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, might have taken his 10,000 hours out of context to just mean any time spent doing something contributes to being good at something. Spending hours replying on social media could be seen as time spent working on my writing or reading someone's diatribe against certain groups of people improving my reading. But we miss out on the last part of Gladwell’s quote, which is the 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice”.
Going back to driving for a while. When I drive to work or home, I typically go by the same route. I don’t “deliberately practice” the route that I’m going to take, I pretty much have my brain off for the majority of the trip. Maybe even listening to a podcast to take my mind off the monotony. I’m not going, “for this turn into my junction, I’m going to make sure to maintain my speed as I exit the turn; making sure to hit the apex of the turn before accelerating as hard as I can while making sure the car doesn’t lose its grip”. I’m going, turn the steering wheel, press the accelerator, brake if necessary, loosen my grip on the steering wheel as the car straightens out on its own. By not being actively involved in improving my driving skills by learning theory or practicing certain skills like defensive driving, I’m just skating by with the bare minimum amount of proficiency needed to operate a vehicle.
In the same way, with writing, if I don’t look at how others write or present their information. Watching YouTube videos and seeing how other presenters present their information. Learning about the methodology or tactics they used to keep audiences engaged. Read books on fiction and how dialogue is presented. How authors describe environments or situations. I could just passively absorb these skills and how authors make use of them but if I don’t make a concerted effort to figure out how and why they do the things they do or make the decisions they’ve made. I’m just making educated guesses instead of acting on concrete information and integrating that into my repertoire of skills. And after I’ve consumed this knowledge, how to apply them and use them effectively.
It’s with this reflection of how we learn and get good at a craft that I’ve to remind myself that this is a marathon and not a sprint. Through hard work and consistency that will benefit me the most while also keeping an open-mind that it’ll be a life of constant learning.
