Topic of Mastery

[The posts this weekend will be of the lighter fare - nothing on math, data, programming or excel. I have a lot of stuff going on over the next few days so I need to get ready for them. And, in about an hour and half, Microsoft will finish updating my machine with a major update. I think it's the Creators update. That would explain why my machine has been sooooo slow lately.]

The other day I was reading some blog entries from Tableau and one blog entry was about other people's resumes. If you don't know, Tableau is in the data visualization sphere so articles or output will tend toward the visuals, and these resumes fill that bill. The resumes weren't your typical resumes; they were very creative, which in most industries may not be accepted...yet.

I always love looking at these visual resumes and these did not fail to inspire. And they were dismaying. The young writers of these resumes sound so accomplished. They know how to use many different type of tools and their knowledge are more of the present day technologies: Photoshop, HTML, Tableau, SQL, maybe other programming codes. One had a really cool website - I mean really nice. And there were many wonderful and

impressive visual images of their work. When did they have time to learn all of this? Drawing takes me about a week (depending on the style) and yet they have lots of visual images. Are they able to dream up those images in an instant? I love looking at those resumes but it is dispiriting because I want to be just as creative and cool but when I look at what I do or what I've accomplished, it's like blegh.

And to top off the general bad feeling, I feel like I'm generally lazy.

Then last night I tried to do some catching up on my videos on design and business. There's a guy out in California who does motion design graphics. His company has been producing educational design videos talking about typography, design, education and business, specifically starting your own. His company produces videos about 3 times a week and they are an hour plus long! I technically don't have an hour to spare so I reserve the videos for the weekend so I can catch up. The storm a few weeks back got me really behind because I stopped watching them - I had other worries to tend.

So, now I'm trying to catch up.

Last night I watched the one that was mostly about mastering whatever it is you do as your work. As usual, when we talk about mastery, the 10,000 hours, practicing and "doing the work" came up. One question that arose was do you experiment first and then learn the basics and then practice? Or do you learn the basics first, practice and then experiment to break out of the rules? The guy who is doing the educational videos says that you learn the basics first and do a lot of practice before you can move onto experimenting.

I think you experiment first, but as a child, especially in the artistic field, and these guys are in the artistic field. You pick up the crayon as a child, play with it and then if you have an inkling that you are actually pretty good and may want to pursue the art, then you go learn the basics and practice. Or take photography. You start off by playing around with the camera. It's probably the same thing with programming, if you have access to the programming language. You will start playing with the programs to see if you can make it do something. Or you take apart the electronic devices and try to put it back together again before your Dad gets home. So I suspect we play and experiment out of curiosity and then learn what we want to do more of.

Then later, once we decide that we actually like doing such activities, we seek out education which usually entails learning the basics.

You kind of have to play around first as a child to see what you enjoy.

There was a guest on the video who is a master in creating title pieces for films. One of the audience in the video asked if there was ever a time he was discouraged and wondered if he would ever master the skills required for film work. That was an interesting question and the guy said, "Oh yeah, many times."

So I guess even the masters can feel discouraged. I just have to keep that in mind.

And now to finish up my drawing - I'm very close to finishing. I maybe have another day before I finish.