The Quest to Choose Our Craft
“Everything you possess of skill, and wealth, and handicraft, wasn’t it first merely a thought and a quest?”
― Rumi Jalalu’l-Din
I’ve fallen in love with the ethos of craftsmanship. From a young age, I was surrounded by master craftspeople. Some examples include the nearby Amish communities, master woodworkers, and teachers who expanded my understanding of the world and what was possible.
Although people usually consider craftsmanship reserved to skills which usually fall under fine arts (e.g. blacksmithing, woodworking, leatherworking, etc.) it really belongs to any keenly refined skill. Craftsmanship can be accomplished in almost any profession given enough time, dedication, and effort.
An important requirement for a craftsperson is to practice a craft. Early in human history, this was a comparatively simple task. There were only up to a couple of hundred options to choose from, and you were usually exposed to at least a quarter of the available options.
These societies were more restrictive, so your choices were fairly narrow. Choosing a craft became a game of matching your aptitudes and willingness to endure hardship with the crafts you were allowed to pursue.
Modern society is far from perfect, but it generally affords people more choice There are several thousand possible crafts to master. Thinking about the sheer number can be daunting. How are we supposed to choose our craft? It seems impossible to do so. There are too many options and not enough time.
My previous statement would be true If we’re looking for the perfect craft. Thankfully, the notion of perfect is stupid and we only need a good enough match for our aptitudes and tolerances. Discovering a craft we’re interested in, have the aptitude to master, and willingness to endure hardship for is vital to a fulfilled life.
Given the importance and scale of this task, I think it’s appropriate for us to call our search for a good craft a quest.
Before I continue, I want to make it clear I’m just as lost about this as you are. Not only are you the expert on your life, but I’m just a 20-something trying to answer the same question. I’m not promising solutions, but rather a hypothesis I think is worthy to test.
Why Pursue Our Craft?
Pursuit of a craft is a highly personal undertaking and decision. Although there isn’t a universally best answer as to why we should pursue a craft, I’m going to propose the reason which is most compelling for me.
A good reason to pursue our craft is that it provides one path to personal fulfillment. Psychological research has found fulfillment is gained through fulfilling three basic needs — autonomy, competency, and relatedness.
Thankfully, the pursuit of a craft slowly allows us to do all three of these things.
As we become better in our chosen craft, we slowly earn the right to choose the projects we want to work on. This is the basic definition of autonomy. At first, we don’t have the luxury of autonomy.
Our first steps in learning our chosen craft may be self-taught, or it may be with whichever experienced practitioner is willing to take us on. If we take tutelage from another practitioner we exchange our initial autonomy for rapid experience acquisition.
Sure, we can blunder our way through our craft, and there is both joy and value to be had from this approach. Personally, I’d prefer to give up a little autonomy, at least initially, to learn some of the tricks of the trade.
As far as I’m concerned, we’re eventually going to have to break off and do our own thing to achieve true mastery. Regardless of how we develop our skill, part of our growth will be unlearning.
At least if we learn under someone who is already having success in the craft we want, most of our fundamentals should be strong and correct.
Competency is the currency required to buy our autonomy. Through developing our skills we’re slowly becoming more valuable to the wider society we ultimately contribute to. As our skill develops, so does our ability to decide which projects we’re going to take on.
Experience is the only way to build competency and gain autonomy. One of the best ways to gain experience is to undertake projects that are just past our current skill which would benefit others.
By striving for excellence in these projects we not only gain many practical lessons but also begin to develop a reputation. Slowly, we become known in your community (which doesn’t have to be geographically based, thanks internet!)
Over time, we get to talk to interesting and talented people in our wider community. Eventually, they trust us with a cooler and bigger project. Through our work, we also start to forge human relationships which extend beyond the work itself.
When we reach this point, we feel connected to the greater whole of human existence. Our work becomes a channel to form relationships with people and connect in a pure way. How people respond to us and our work forms the basis for relatedness.
Together, these three elements allow us to live a life that feels purposeful and worthwhile.
What Do You Mean By Our Quest to Choose?
If you’ve ever read fantasy, then you’re intimately familiar with the idea of a quest. Whether it’s Morpheus, Obi-Wan, Gandalf, or Halt, some powerful figure comes to the soon-to-be hero and offers them a chance to forever alter their life.
Most of us will never have the luck or fortune of having a mentor appear and give us something meaningful to do. Instead, most of us inherit a blank map, semi-functioning compass, and decree by our society that we have to be useful to the whole in some way.
Instead of a powerful figure telling us what we should do, we’re self-tasked to find what we can learn well while tolerating or even appreciating the common, less than glamorous aspects of our craft’s work.
“Quest — a long or arduous search for something.”
Dedication to finding our craft requires a steadfast commitment. Deciding upon and then acting towards mastering a specific set of skills requires a long-term view. A lot of the journey won’t be glamorous or fun, and we should accept that now.
Finding a craft we enjoy and wish to master is something special. Special things require special actions, and voluntary personal sacrifice is a special, uncommon action.
Hero’s Journey
In all the stories previously mentioned, the protagonist followed an arc called the hero’s journey. Proposed by Joseph Campbell, this framework tells the progression of most hero’s journeys throughout most fictional narratives.
Our Hero’s Journey
I’d argue our quest to find our craft follows a similar cycle. I believe the Hero’s Journey can be applied to any endeavor in which one seeks to better themselves and the lives of those who depend upon them.
Our quest to find our craft is no different than that of Luke Skywalker. We will encounter inspiration, move forward to put in the effort, find mentors along the way, and experience great personal sacrifice.
If we see the journey through we emerge forever altered and usually improved.
I personally love the return part of a hero’s journey most. After enduring hardship to acquire something valuable and rare, we return home with the intention to use our newfound power/skill/item for the betterment of our wider community.
Tom Bilyeu’s version of what life’s purpose is echos this sentiment. To him, life’s purpose is to learn as many skills that have utility as possible and test our mastery of these skills in service to others. Encapsulated in this idea is a poetic harmony. Improving ourselves so we can help others build themselves up is mutually beneficial.
A key point here is when we’re helping someone else build themselves up, we’re still growing and learning. So, we manage to kill two birds with one stone. Not only are we helping other people place their best note in our human harmony, but we’re refining our own note in tandem.
Of course, before we can get to all this goodness, we need to take the first step.
Exploration (Call to Action)
In our favorite novels, the first step to most adventures is the hero’s call to action. Whether that’s computer code telling us to wake up, a bearded wizard inviting himself and 12 other dwarves into our home, or an endless stream of letters followed by a bearded giant knocking in our door.
Unfortunately, our call to action is less likely to be this exciting; however, that’s not to say it’ll be entirely mundane. In our lives, the call to find our craft often starts after witnessing a master at work.
The range of crafts spans the entirety of human competency. Some of us gravitate towards engineers constructing the perfect circuit, others are engrossed watching master carpenters erect new structures, others still are drawn to healers of mind, spirit, and body.
Regardless of what craft ultimately calls out to us, we’ll eventually find something that we’re at least slightly interested in. If we don’t, then we may be better off dead. The world is fascinating and there is so much that I want to try and learn. I find it hard to believe someone can’t something interesting.
Of course, we don’t know what we don’t know. If we’ve lived in a small town our entire life and didn’t realize there’s an entire field of people who make a living deriving math equations, then we’ll never stumble into something that could be our craft.
Alleviating our ignorance requires engagement and exploration. As much as we’re able, we need to explore the wider world around us and all the amazing things humans can, have and will do. I recognize this is easier said than done. Many of us have several competing responsibilities, or bills to pay, or all-consuming jobs.
Sometimes we’re dealt a suboptimal hand and have to play it the best we can. In this case, the sacrifice of our precious free time may be required. Our craft and pursuit of mastery for the improvement of ourselves and those who depend on us demand all we can muster.
Fortunately for us, if we’re reading this article, we have more opportunity than most people throughout recorded human history. Previously, to even see several crafts we’d have to travel to distant lands. This isn’t even getting to the point where we can actively participate.
Today, we’re lucky to have the internet. Anything we find even slightly interesting we can lookup via google, youtube, etc. We can leverage these tools to test and narrow our potential interests.
Window shopping our future craft in this way is great, but eventually, we need to get into the driver’s seat.
Experimentation (Crossing the Threshold)
Once we’ve found something that captures our interest, the only way to know if that craft is truly for us is to take the plunge. At this juncture, we need to leave the safety and comfort of our normal routine and areas of competency.
We must bravely push into our ignorance and embrace incompetence to fully engage with whatever has captivated our interest. Personally, I find this stage the hardest and scariest. Like most people, I don’t like to feel dumb. Finding our craft requires us swallowing our ego, usually several times over, to become a beginner again.
The route to experimentation is as varied as the number of potential crafts we can choose, but there are several common trends which will help us on our voyage.
In the beginning, we will in all likelihood be the blissful beginner. We’ll likely be elated that we can do the thing we loved at all. Regardless of how horribly we’re doing it, we’ll likely be thinking two things.
Firstly, we’ll be thinking of how much fun this is to do. Previously, we watched other people do this and now we’re getting to do this in some capacity. We’re emulating our idols in some small fashion and loving every second.
Each experience is new and novel. Every technique we try is fascinating, even if we don’t really understand it or how to properly do it yet. We’re losing ourselves into practice and skill which we had only thought about doing prior.
Secondly, we’re going to think we’re much better than we are. The oft-cited Dunning-Kruger curve tends to hold true here. There seems to be a progression of our confidence in relation to our skill. At first, we’re so blissfully unaware of how deep the field we’re in is.
We’re able to get kinda close (but not really) to the projects those we emulate do. The process is a joy as we’re not yet aware of how far we have to go. It’ll be a long time before we can start reproducing the same quality work which attracted us to the craft.
Like all good things, the blissful beginner phase must eventually come to a close. As we’ve become more familiar with all the new techniques and other work in the space, we slowly begin to realize how incompetent at our craft we currently are.
The Dip (Ordeal and Rebirth)
Once the novelty of our new craft wares off and we start to gain some practical experience, enter the dip. Anyone familiar with the process of learning a new skill also knows that this is the most dangerous part of learning.
Upon entering the dip our confidence is at its lowest and our skills are not yet adequate to make the learning process feel fun and worthwhile. This phase is easier to endure if we know we’re eventually going to run into it, but it’ll never be fun.
Anyone who has watched Mike Boyd learn new skills has seen this several times over. In one of his most recent episodes, he actually explains the learning curve which I think is valuable for anyone to watch.
“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
Of course, this quote isn’t rooted in reality, but the sentiment is what matters here. Our darkest days of self-doubt, and if we’re not careful, self-hatred, await us in the dip. Especially if we started pursuing something because we fell deeply in love with it, or felt it could be especially impactful, this necessary phase hurts like hell.
Thankfully, the old adage of with great sacrifice comes great reward also holds true here. If we’re able to hold on and make it through the dip, a light slowly emerges in the distance. Once again our confidence increases as we ascend to the higher levels of intermediate skill and beyond.
Cruising into intermediate levels of skill and beyond increase our joy of the craft and our confidence in it, while decreasing the pain we feel with learning increasingly complex things. At this point, we’ve safely navigated the ordeals of our craft and have emerged as a more skilled and confident person.
Our trials laid the foundation from which we can begin our ascent to mastery.
Mastery (The Boone)
From here, I’m going to speak from a purely theoretical lens. I have not yet achieved mastery in any given craft, and it will be a long time before I do. Thankfully, there are many people who have mastered their discipline. So, like any good artist, I’m going to shamelessly steal their life’s work as inspiration for this discussion, with proper credit of course.
Malcolm Gladwell hypothesized that it takes about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice before one becomes a master. If you’ve followed this narrative beyond the surface level chatter, then you know that he mostly made this number up.
Despite the ethically skeptical nature of making things up and proposing them to be the results of an extensive study, I think this marker is valuable. The arbitrary marker still has value because it gives us a sense of the sheer amount of work required to become proficient in our craft.
If the thought of spending this much time in a given craft we hope to become our bread and butter fills us only with dread, then there’s a good chance we haven’t yet found our craft.
To be clear, I’m not talking about the passion hypothesis or that you have to be entirely passionate about what you’re doing all the time. That is a fantasy. Everything sucks some of the time and to say otherwise is to ignore reality.
Instead, I’m proposing if we look at that number and are excited about spending a long amount of time working at your craft in spite of the obstacles, then we have a good chance. It seems only fair that we should put in a lot of time in order to get the rewards that come from being very good at a particular thing.
An expectation of instant gratification can make this type of slow work seem unappealing, but it also makes it more valuable. If fewer people are willing to put in the long, arduous hours which mastery requires, then we can take advantage and develop a rare skill set which has utility to our wider communities.
Mastery for its own reward is nice, but it’s more valuable to develop and pursue skills which let you have utility and contribute to your wider community. For this reason, teaching should be both a goal and an ongoing part of the process.
As a brief aside, many of us may view teaching as a mono-directional activity. The teacher teaches and the student learns. Fortunately, this is far from reality. Instead, there’s a famous quote which summarizes what truly happens when one teaches.
“When one teaches, two learn.”
As a teacher, you’re not the sole source of knowledge. If you teach with this mentality then you’re a lecturer. Instead, a teacher is better described as an experienced facilitator. They may have a more fleshed out roadmap and more experience navigating the terrain, but their understanding is never complete.
When we embrace a teaching approach as part of our quest to mastery, not only do we bring value to other people, but we also bring value to ourselves as we force ourselves to understand our craft more deeply.
Teaching (The Return)
Eventually, our training, our adventures, and our effort will lead us back to a community for us to settle in for a while. While there may be a subsection of us this never truly applies to, most of us will eventually pick a place to settle for a long period of time.
One of the most rewarding, and sometimes hairpulling, parts of establishing roots is the opportunity and obligation to participate in the wider community. Luckily for us, our chosen craft allows us to engage on our terms while still providing value.
Teaching a set of skills and exposing current and future generations to another option are of great value. Whether you’re a mathematician looking to uncover the next great theorem, a woodworker building treestands for your local festival of trees, or a writer providing introductory writing classes.
All of these crafts help build the villages in which we reside. Even if we find ourselves in a larger city — like New York or Minneapolis, there are still smaller villages which emerge in our neighborhoods.
As an added bonus, using our knowledge to help our community we get an answer to the question of our purpose. We’re meant to contribute to the wider framework of our community and change our world.
At first glance, it may appear that focusing on a microscale is the slowest way to ensure no change is sustainable or widespread. In some ways, this assumption is correct; however, suppose our example inspires a whole generation of other people to also acquire valuable skills that can help the communities they ultimately reside in and so on.
In a few generations, our simple act of becoming masterful in something that has value, then using our skill to benefit our small community creates ripples we cannot begin to fathom.
When one teaches, two learn, but when two learn the world benefits.
Wrapping Up
When we pursue a craft, we stop focusing inward as much and start to focus outward. If we’re committing correctly, our focus is solely on the task at hand and the skills we’re learning. Our pursuit removes from our incessant mental chatter, if only for a moment.
As a consequence, we’re focusing more on the eternal world and accepting things as they are. Acting in concert with reality, instead of opposition, can lead to its own bliss. We also focus less on our own problems and more on those of others.
Chasing excellence in a craft ultimately requires us to answer a simple question. “What problem do other people have that the skills I have and will develop can solve?” Embracing this question forces us to contribute instead of expecting, which leads to being more connected with those around us.
Although not exclusively, the pursuit of our craft often resembles the hero’s journey. In some ways, this implies that we can be the hero of our own journey.
To be clear, finding our craft isn’t the answer to all our woes, nor will we find eternal bliss and happiness after going through this process. The notion that happiness is a permanent state is bullshit. Instead, we start on the path to something much more meaningful.
Our pursuit of a craft will grant us self-fulfillment. Fulfillment doesn’t promise the road will be all sunshine and rainbows. It doesn’t promise that there’s a happily ever after. What fulfillment does promise is, within the constraints of our lives, we have the agency to play the hand we were dealt to the best of our ability.
Bonus points if we become the hero of our six-year-old self’s imagination in the process.
