Are You Technically Perfect?

Are you really technically perfect?

And, if you are, where do you go from there?

In the not-so-distant past, and because it’s the past I will stick with the appropriate terms, the professions followed a process of Apprentice – Journeyman – Master.

Nowadays, this has vanished in all but the artisanal professions, which is really a shame.

With the advent of organised industrial schooling and universities the result, in most professions, has been a large group of so-called qualified apprentices entering the market place, many of who are destined to settle at middle management or the Journeyman/woman level.

Why?

Because the focus is on technical perfection.

Technically perfect, but lacking soul.

To arrive at the level of Master or, for want of a better term, Artist, you have to go beyond technical perfection. You need to dare to explore the rules, to break rules, bend rules and change the rules you have spent your 10 000 hours learning. And we are not taught to do that. We are taught to colour within the lines.

What’s more, most people don’t even have the self-discipline to reach the 10 000 hours, consciously. They do it on autopilot with little self-correction.

Now, please note, I believe there is artistry in ever pursuit. There is artistry in science, in medicine, in mathematics, in cooking, in civil engineering, in law, in marketing, in our relationships; we are constantly presented with the opportunity to take a moment in time and turn it into something beyond the technically perfect, transcending into the sublime.

The paradox is, that to arrive at the title of Artist, you first need to go from technical proficiency to technical perfection. That can only be achieved through practice.

So, take action, follow the rules first, then transcend them by daring to make mistakes, and of course, to learn from them.