Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is concentration and focus. I've always been someone whose attention span is easily sidetracked (a trait I'm seeing in one of my kids now). For most of my life I've just sort of accepted this state of micro bursts of energy towards all sorts of things, shifting lanes and pursuing whatever interests me at the time. It's something I've just always chalked up to how my brain works. However, I'm learning that concentration is something that can be learned.
Cal Newport suggests several practices that can be used to train concentration, including getting our brains comfortable with boredom (time away from devices) and slowly building up increased focus time on a topic (interval training). In The Craftsman, Sennett similarly discusses concentration as physical skill that needs to be honed. Specifically, he talks about how the repetitive nature of skill building becomes more enjoyable as you hone that ability to concentrate on it. This is something I say to my kids all the time, the only way to get good at something is to practice.
But practice feels boring and boredom is a symptom that our present cultural moment has attempted to liberate us from. However, as I reflect on what we have given up in exchange for endless, immediate gratification, I find myself longing for boredom again.
"We should not compete against the machine. A machine, like any model, ought to propose rather than command, and humankind should certainly walk away from command to imitate perfection. Against the claim of perfection we can assert our own claim of individuality, which gives distinctive character to the work we do.”
Continuing in my read of The Craftsman (Sennett), I found this to be a really salient point in light of current conversations around machines. Machines set standards of perfection that humans simply cannot compete against; and so we shouldn't. Rather, than perfection we should strive for originality in our craft. Embrace the quirks and flaws that make our work our own.
These are the marks of our humanity imprinted on the objects we make.
Was reading a book recently on woodworking and the author suggested that 17th and 18th century woodworkers required significantly fewer tools than today because their skill levels were simply higher. They knew how to build furniture in ways that have been mostly forgotten. This makes sense. As a growing number of specialized tools to accomplish very specific tasks were made, our skills and knowledge shrank. Now today, much of woodworking is done via machines that can cut, shape, and work wood at far greater speeds and quantities than older, less efficient methods.
It's an interesting thing to consider how the very knowledge of how to do a thing changes over time due to our innovations. Most craft, in generations past, relied on obedient submission to a master's teaching and guidance. You learned through immersive repetition, doing the thing over and over again until you embodied it. This is something Sennett refers to as tacit knowledge. Machines have offered us a shortcut to this process. But I can't help but wonder if it's a good thing. We are replacing the very concept of learning.
Anyways, this past weekend I spent a bunch of time in the garage making some benchhooks and a crochet.
Writing about computer assisted design in city planning, Sennett makes a fascinating statement on how it fails to consider the incomplete.
"The calculations draw a false inference about how well the finished object will function. Overdetermined design rules out the crinkled fabric of buildings that allow little startup businesses, and so communities, to grow and vibrate. This texture results from underdetermined structures that permit use to abort, swerve, and evolve."
It's hard not to think about AI while reading this book and there's something in this idea that I am intrigued by. Computer driven responses tend to deal in the complete or finished. We ask a question and we get an answer. Yet Sennett's point here is that the real world is harder to predict. Life happens in the unfinished parts of the structures or rules we design.
I think of it as potential, something perhaps machines are incapable of considering.
"Bedded in too comfortably, people will neglect the higher standard; it is by arousing self-consciousness that the worker is driven to do better."
Continuing in the Craftsman, Sennett is asking what it is that gets people to do good work. He explores several problems in oversimplifying an answer and then draws us to what he calls a "liminal space between problem solving and problem finding." It is here, he seems to say, that self-awareness elevates craft.
Perhaps what makes a craftsman great is thoughtfulness, a cyclical and perhaps even obsessive reflection on what you're making. It sits in you, inhabits you. You consider it, then do, then reflect, and do again.