So you want to master a craft?

There is no way around the fact that mastering a craft is a very long journey. The important thing is that we are developing as efficiently as possible. Life is short and we want to get the most out of the time that we invest.

The least efficient way to build a car is to try and reinvent the wheel. We want to learn from the masters that have come before us and soak in their expertise.

When it comes to creating art, the only prerequisite is having an internal aesthetic compass. Nobody can teach you what you like. The first step is to consume and collect work that you really love. Find stuff that resonates with you somehow. You don’t have to know why it does at this stage. Find work that you want to be able to create.

The most efficient way to learn is to then try and replicate this work. Try to make an exact copy. This may involve some reverse engineering. If you want to build an engine, the best way is to take an engine and rip it apart to figure out how it works, then rebuild it back together.

The process of doing this is going to teach you far more than what you could learn by reading a book. There are some things which just can’t be captured in instructive prose. You learn these things by comparing what you have built to the thing you were trying to replicate and seeing where you fell short. You have a direct feedback loop to drive your learning.

Once you have been through this process a few times, your brain will naturally start to generalise the principles. You will spot connections between things you are doing and things you have done before. This is how learning works. As this starts to happen we are able to move away from exact copying and begin to create more original work. Not entirely original. We can copy various aspects from different pieces, and have the flexibility to start changing things around.

We are now developing our skills to create things in accordance with our aesthetic compass.