Why I Admire Skill Over Passion
I explore Skill over Passion looking back at my guitar playing history, my computer programming and my business acumen
I’ve always admired people who are excellent at their craft. There’s something quite magical to witness creation at the hands of a master.
Perhaps, at a deeper level we admire someone who has mastered themselves and we aspire to that in our own lives. Perhaps on another end of the scale, when we witness greatness we cannot attain, we want to be near it — absorb it and maybe get inspired by it.
Skill is hard to define when we are in awe of it. We tell ourselves,
They look know what they’re doing. They’re experts. They’ve dedicated their lives to that one thing. They’re masters.
We often forget the sacrifice needed to achieve these levels of excellence. We become guilty of reducing the craftsman’s journey into a montage of images, words and cliches, almost casually dismissing the heartache of failures, frustrations and roadblocks that have been overcome.
The Guitar
When I was 10, I decided to learn how to play and so started a long journey to master the instrument.
Growing up, my mentors changed. Over time, my musical tastes and even my dedication to the instrument changed. Life influences the art and art influences life.
By the time I reached my late teens and early twenties, I thought I was pretty good. Some would describe me as being a ‘master’ at that point. Yet it’s all relative. There’s always someone who is better. Always.
It wasn’t until I got to London and I got to play alongside other players that I realised how ‘under skilled’ I was. Surrounded by other masters — it raised my game. It forced me to go DEEPER.
For a discipline like playing guitar, I would say there are 3 levels of mastery: technical, musical and artistic.
The technical side is the physical ability to play the music or whatever artistic influence comes to mind.
The music is extremely linked to the technical, but it has its own discipline and body of knowledge to master being a language all its own.
Artistic expression, is perhaps the most difficult because it’s the mastery of yourself (knowing your own limitations but still expressing yourself honestly and creatively) against the creation of something new and interesting.
I can say that my mastery of guitar took to new levels, even though it took some time. Ten years, in fact. I was never going to be as technically proficient as my mentors, but I began expressing myself through different ideas that were unique to my strengths, my style, my personality.
This transition from chasing technical proficiency and becoming more a master of my guitar-playing “self”. I could be called upon to bring my own musicality to a jam, a performance or an album.
Mastery meant that no-one could play the guitar like me.
Computer Non-Programming
Like the guitar, I took an interest in this discipline at an early age. But unlike the guitar, I didn’t develop a proficiency in it that I could be satisfied to call myself a master.
I am not a programmer or developer.
But I can code in intermediate SQL. I can code in basic VBA and some heartbreakingly juvenile C-Sharp. No Java. Perhaps at a stretch some Turbo Pascal (yes, that’s for the old-timers).
This is not to say that I didn’t dedicate a significant portion of time and effort into LEARNING how to code.
One of the experiences I remember was with my Commodore 64. My mum had bought me some (expensive) books programming and games and graphics. I took to it like a flame to oil.
I remember spending 4 to 5 days typing in an Interpreter programme for the C64 that would then read Machine Language for a shoot-em-up game. The book then had 20 or 30 pages of Machine Language code. I spent 4 days of my school holidays keying this in.
It worked the first time. But I was disappointed in the game and was upset at the payoff. Nonetheless, I had acquired skills I would later use in life.
I didn’t become a master; I could never express myself in programming that was equivalent to my guitar playing. Instead, I viewed myself as a engineer. I had lots of “tools” of knowledge. I had experienced the agony of laborious coding. I had experienced the need for typing accuracy and long bouts of concentration.
Contrast this to the many developers who I have come across in my professional life. One of my friends, back in elementary school, created a programme that would save the teacher’s keystrokes onto a file in the computer. I mean seriously, this was astounding!
He was then able to get the system’s password on an Apple IIe. He was 9 years old. He had mastered something I could not — he had bridged technical understanding and a real-world application.
Much later, a programmer I knew with mechanical engineering as well as a computing degree, gave me lessons in science that just blew my mind. He explained networks and hacking and artificial intelligence — and this was in the late 90s before the millennium bug.
Somehow I understood it and it pretty much solidified in my mind that I could never call myself a programmer because not only did I not dedicate myself to these knowledge disciplines, but I hadn’t the same level of passion he had. And most of the programmers I knew shared forms of this in one shape or another — the best ones being able to shape it into something useful and magical.
Today, these learned skills come out in my professional work as a technology manager. I still code, but I know my weaknesses. I know my where the limits are.
Business & Personal Development
Mastery doesn’t always mean being world-class. Mastery doesn’t always have to be about titles. It can be in how you conduct yourself in your profession — whatever that is.
Today, I am a manager in a Finance division. I am not a business owner nor could I call myself an entrepreneur, even though I have attempted this and failed. Perhaps one day, I will succeed — but I know that my passion for entrepreneurship won’t materialise that dream.
What I do know is that my accounting skills are sharp. They have been for over 20 years. I also know that my computing skills have developed in line with a new interest I discovered at University — people management and behavioural sciences.
It’s in these skills and acumen that I have gathered for the last 20 years. Rather than call myself a coach, I have been developing my craft of business systems and people, through my profession. It’s a discipline that draws on many knowledge pools and I am excited that new technology is finally appearing to bridge these all together in more meaningful ways.
Here I am playing the long game. But there are many others who can stand in stark contrast to my own. Young achievers who have grown star-up businesses and entrepreneurial ventures, from Online Marketing and Facebook Advertising, to App Development and Online Teaching and Coaching.
But I challenge all pioneers to step back a moment. The skills we developed that matter most, didn’t just appear. The responsibility we hold, as we prepare the next generation for their turn in contributing for this life, is to pass on the attitude of building a career in Skills Acquisition.
It’s not just our over exuberance or excitement — which for sure, fuels the initial flame, but when the boring, frustrating and challenging parts come to knock you off your feet, it is the skills and only the skills that can really define your mastery of your self.
