I did this for a friend, Joe, who owns a Smoothie King franchise. The text will say “Smoothie King: Where fruit goes to get whipped.” The store is in Harrisonburg, VA (right next to the Marine recruiter if you want to make two stops). It’s also across the street from James Madison University which has a bulldog for its mascot — quite a coincidence considering how many bulldogs I draw. I don’t know if Joe will do anything with it, but I thought it was fun to do:
I find Abraham Lincoln’s method of planning the most appealing and the most practical. Jokingly, he has stated that his “plan is to have no plan.†When pressed further, he equated his method of planning with how he navigated a river as a riverboat captain. When navigating the river, he would plan his immediate route only as far as he could see, which was the next bend in the river. Once he reached the point he plotted, and turned the bend, he could see a new point to navigate to. In other words, even though he had his ultimate destination in mind, he would only make practical plans based on his ability to see a reasonable path to the next step.
Lincoln didn’t know that General Lee would surrender his army to General Grant at Appomattox in 1865 when he decided to order a resupply of Fort Sumter before the first shots of the Civil War had been fired. From his perspective in 1861, resupplying Fort Sumter was consistent with his ultimate goal to maintain the integrity of the Union. Once the resupply was unsuccessful and shots had been fired, he had a new vantage point and a new course to plot. The goal remained the same — preserve the Union — but the plan remained fluid throughout the war until the end.
I would suggest a Lincolnesque approach to your education plan. If mastery is your goal — and mastery takes 10,000 hours — it is unreasonable to expect to have everything figured out from day one. Van Gogh didn’t know he would paint Starry Night in an expressionist style when he decided to dedicate himself to art. Likewise, you don’t need to know how to accomplish your education goals when you begin. Have faith that along the way you will learn how to finish your goals. The key in the beginning is to create momentum in the right direction.
My grandfather tried to impress this principle upon me when I was young. For career day at my school we were allowed to go with a relative to work. As my dad was in the Marines, we were usually stationed far from family, but for a short time, my dad was assigned in Washington D.C. During this time we lived close to my grandfather, a meteorologist, so I went to work with him.
The day I joined him, my grandfather was constructing computer models to explain why there are droughts in South Africa. For anyone who is curious, it’s because the wind direction at certain times of year pushes clouds against a mountain range before it crosses over the land. The clouds have to dump their moisture before they clear the mountain range, hence the drought. I’m not exactly sure what went into the computer models, except that I think it involved a level of math that was (and is) well beyond what I understand.
On the way home, my grandfather talked to me a little about attending college. My grades had already started to slip as I came to the realization that I wouldn’t be able to afford college. He explained to me that when he started college he didn’t know how he would be able to finish it. He knew, however, that his first step was to start college, so that’s what he did. He figured the rest out on the way. Like Lincoln captaining his riverboat, as his vantage point changed, the next steps became clear to him. He was able to navigate and a plan as far ahead as his vision would allow. Even though my grandfather couldn’t see the path to his ultimate goal clearly early on, that didn’t prevent him from traversing the part of the path he could see.
The ultimate goal, though, is important. It’s the psychological equivalent of the North Star. Not every education plan has to have a college credential attached to it in order to be meaningful, although it may. I believe, however, that it must be a substantial goal in order to provide long-term direction. To return to the Van Gogh example, when he decided to become an artist, he didn’t know exactly what he would do or paint, but realized he needed to master perspective and anatomy. In the beginning he concentrated on that. About three years into his study, given his swelling skill with painting coupled with the realities of his deteriorating health, his vision for himself became clear. His North Star became brighter. In 1883 In a letter to his brother Theo, he wrote:
If I think of it with level-headed reasoning for the purpose of estimation or planning, it is, of course, in the nature of things that I can’t possibly have any certainty of this.
But by comparison with various people whose lives we have known, or with with whom we have something in common, we can surely make certain suppositions that are not totally without foundation. About the time span I have ahead of me in which I can still work, I believe I can accept the fact, without being too premature, that my physical body will last out, all being well, for a certain number of years — a certain number being, say, between six and ten. I dare to accept this, moreover, because at the moment there is not yet an immediate “all being well.”
That is the period I firmly count on; beyond that I would consider it all too much airy speculation to determine for myself, as it will, for instance, particularly depend on these first ten years whether there will be anything after that time or not.
If you wear yourself out too much in those years, then you don’t get beyond forty. If you conserve yourself sufficiently to withstand certain shocks that tend to befall people and overcome more or less complicated physical difficulties, then you move from forty to fifty into new, fairly normal waters.
But calculations about this are at present not on the agenda, although plans for a period of five to ten years are, as I said before. My plan is not to save myself, not to spare emotions or difficulties too much — it is relatively indifferent to me whether I live longer or shorter. I am, moreover, not competent to guide myself physically in the way that, for instance, a doctor can do to some extent.
So I carry on in my ignorance, but knowing this one thing: I must accomplish certain work within a space of a few years; I need not rush, because there is no future in that — but serenely and with composure I must carry on working with as much regulation and concentration as possible, and as much to the point as possible. The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings — not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed. This work is therefore my objective — and by concentrating on this thought, it simplifies what I do or don’t do in so far that it does not lead to chaos, but that all I do has one and the same aspiration.
This is not just a goal, but is what Jim Collins, and Jerry I. Porras would call a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). The term BHAG comes from their book Built to Last. In researching their book, they studied enduring great institutions to see what made them so successful. One of their key findings was the use of BHAGs to stimulate progress, like Boeing’s commitment to build the 707—the first commercial jet, or Ford’s quest to democratize the automobile. In a previous post, I talked about how Michael Dell liked to use BHAGs. The concept appears to work on an individual level as well as an organizational one. Take a look at the goals of some famous Americans, and decide for yourself how big, hairy and audacious they are:
Walt Disney’s Goals
When he was young, Walt Disney’s first goal was simply to make money drawing. This may seem small compared to what he eventually accomplished, but it was big for him at the time. Later he had the goal of going into business for himself and being his own boss. He failed in his first attempt and succeeded in his second. He then set a goal to produce the best animated shorts. In accomplishing that goal, his company was the first to synchronize sound to animation, the first to have color animation and developed characterization previously unseen in cartoons. Once he felt that he had done all he could with the short, Disney set the goal of a full-length animated feature. This pattern of goal setting continued throughout his life, where even on his deathbed he was planning Epcot Center.
Benjamin Franklin’s Goals
The first meaningful goal we can discern from Franklin’s life is his goal of becoming a good writer. As he got older, he wanted to go into business for himself. Like Disney, this took a couple of attempts. Once he retired from business, he aspired to understand electricity. As a statesman his goal was to avert a war with England and worked for fifteen years to that end. He failed on that one and set a new goal to separate from England. Franklin, along with the other Revolutionaries, sought to create the first modern democracy of its scale. One major goal at his death was to write an autobiography that would provide instruction for Americans on how to be Americans. Even though he didn’t finish the work, he accomplished the goal. The second goal that he was working on was the abolition of slavery, which would be left for others to achieve.
The Wright Brothers’ Goals
The Wrights were always enterprising. At an early age they set the goal of publishing their own newspaper. It was a small enterprise, but quite an accomplishment for a pair of young boys. Later they decided to open a bicycle shop. When they learned of Otto Lilienthal’s death, they entered the field as scientific hobbyists. It’s important to note that they did not initially have the stated goal of solving the flight problem, but rather to contribute to further the knowledge of flight to aid the person who would achieve final success. Along the way they became more ambitious.
Frederick Douglass’s Goals
As a boy, Douglass yearned to learn to read. This simple thing, because of nature of slavery, was an enormous but necessary challenge for him. Douglass set the goal of teaching other slaves to read with limited success. As an adult he set his sights on his freedom. He failed in his first attempt but succeeded in his second. Once free, he simply wanted to get a job, work, and support his family — a simple goal by modern day standards — but for one who was not used to the burdens of a free man it was quite an adjustment. By accident more than by design, Douglass became a great orator who spoke out frequently about the blight of slavery. He set out and wrote a book about his experiences as a slave — then a second — and a third. Along the way, he struck out on his own against the advice of many of his friends and started his own anti-slavery newspaper to work for the freedom of slaves. Once that was achieved he worked for the right of black men to vote. Once that was achieved he turned his attention to women’s suffrage. In fact, on the day he died from a heart attack, he was scheduled to speak, along with Susan B. Anthony, in an attempt to secure equal rights for women.
Notice how their initial goals — to become a better writer, to make money drawing, to publish a small newspaper, to learn to read — all seem to pale in comparison to their later goals. To be sure, though, these initial goals were large for them at the time they made them. It required their full attention and effort. Unlike their later goals, these initial goals seem attainable by mortals and not just the demigods that stare back at us from the pages of history. We can achieve goals like these. I suspect that if we set our minds to it, and we turn that critical first bend on the river, the view would look quite different.
Postscript:
In between the time I started writing this column two weeks ago and now, my grandfather, George Cressman, passed away after a long bout with Alzheimer’s. If not for the disease, I have no doubt that he would have lived well past one hundred. My blog, “The Art of the Three Disciplines,†is inspired by the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program’s dedication to the mental, physical, and character disciplines. Although he was not a Marine, I don’t know of anyone who embodied these principles more than my grandfather. My championship of the Marine Corps’s shift to this three-pronged philosophy has much to do with my grandfather; I recognized that he exemplified this approach, and I have long believed that his example is worth emulation. My grandfather’s mental discipline and integrity were beyond reproach. He was also an avid runner who I could never seem to keep up with. The last time we ran together along the Potomac, he was 80 years old. Because of his Alzheimer’s, (and my unwillingness to cry “uncle†to an 80 year old man) he forgot to turn us around in a timely manner, and we ran for over an hour. He was always like that — setting the bar just to let us know what was possible.
As a child, I was amazed by his accomplishments. He not only attended a university and earned a Doctorate from the University of Chicago, he went on to become the head of the National Weather Service. When I asked my step-grandmother, Fran, if my grandpa found his own accomplishments amazing, she responded, “No, he did not, because he knew how hard he worked to achieve them.â€
Although he passed last weekend, because of the way Alzheimer’s affected his mind, I feel that he has been gone for much longer. I wasn’t prepared to hear his advice when I was young, and when I became prepared, he was no longer able to provide mentorship. I believe I understand now what he tried to convey to me as a child. As a testament to the character of this good man, I am happy to share it with you. I hope it sinks in faster with you than it did with me.
Gannon Beck
Here are some pictures from my latest studies.
It’s amazing how much more I enjoy drawing vehicles now that I understand how to do them better. This one was drawn and inked by me with Kyle Tobin doing the rest.
I’ve always had a problem drawing wheels. I eventually tracked down the problem: my understanding of how circles are effected by linear perspective was flawed. I had studied the problem, but when I applied what I thought I knew, my wheels never turned out quite right. No amount of practice with my flawed principles would have made the wheels I drew look correct. There were only two ways out of the problem for me:
1. Discovery: Over time, I may have stumbled upon the correct principles all on my own. To do this I would have to have made better observations and experimented with any theory I constructed to see if there were any improvements.
2. Learn from someone who has an understanding of the correct principles: This is what I actually did. I’ve talked about it before, but Marshall Vandruff’s DVD series on perspective is pure gold. I listened to the instruction, then experimented with the a few drawings to see if my perspective improved, which it has.
Practice without experimentation is merely repetition. If you want to improve on something, you have to try to do it differently somehow than you did it before. That is why experimentation is so important.
Here are a couple of my latest experiments:
Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4— Part 5
Intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.
— Albert Einstein
The main point about reading, collaboration, and experimentation is not that these are simply three ways to learn, but rather they represent an integrated approach to learning where all three facets of the framework must be present. In order for expertise to fully develop, the effort must be sustained for 10,000 hours. Attempting to attain expertise without any one of the three components or not sustaining the effort for the necessary duration is a recipe for stagnation. Awareness of the traps makes them easy to avoid, so let’s take a look at each one in turn:
1. Reinventing the lightning rod trap
To learn without reading would be like reinventing the lightning rod. People talk about reinventing the wheel, but that’s a tired cliché that tells us nothing. Who invented the first wheel? How long did it take to make the conceptual break-through in that person’s life? Did it take days? Months? Years? We don’t know. The lightning rod is different because its invention is famous enough to give the analogy substance. And, of course, I’ll jump at any opportunity to talk about Ben Franklin. We know that Franklin began his immersion into science after he retired from his printing business at the age of 42. From the time he first delved into the subject of electricity it took Franklin about 10 years to have the conceptual breakthrough that allowed him to invent the lightning rod. You, however, can have a better conceptual understanding of lightning rods than Ben Franklin by taking five minutes to read the lightning rod entry on Wikipeida. So before you venture out on a new learning endeavor, figure out what is already known. You just may save 10 years of your time.
Another example can be found in the discipline I study – art. Today artists can learn anatomy from books and sculptures. Imagine learning anatomy in Leonardo da Vinci’s day when no books were available on the subject. Of his efforts he said:
The smell must have been lovely. It’s much easier (and less disgusting) to learn anatomy today with the many books on the subject. It’s important to note that da Vinci did this only because he had to. There were no books on the subject. Where anatomy was uncharted territory that required experimentation, the subject of perspective was a product of the Renaissance that da Vinci had access to. His approach to perspective shows his attitude to this subject and, I think, his approach to learning in general:
Pick whatever analogy works best for you: Don’t reinvent the wheel; don’t reinvent the lightning rod; or don’t dissect human corpses to learn anatomy. With a written history that started around the 4th millennium BC, there is an easier way. It would be foolish not to learn as much as possible from those who have come before us.
2. Paralysis of analysis trap
This is an easy trap to fall into because taking action can be daunting. Fear of failure is the primary reason this trap exists.
I must confess that I am guilty of this in my study of watercolor painting. I love watercolor, but it intimidates me. I have always yearned to be a watercolorist, so I have bought book after book thinking, “this will be the one that will tell me the secret I need to know.†The problem wasn’t my knowledge though. My problem is that I did far too much reading and not enough painting.
I can tell you all about color theory, about complementary colors, analogous color schemes, transparent colors, opaque colors. I can explain what a flat wash is compared to a gradated wash. I can talk a good game because I’ve read extensively. What I can’t do is paint very well with the medium.
Solving the problem will not require that I overcome my fear of failure in the traditional sense. In other words, it doesn’t mean that I must accept the possibility that failure might occur, or that with enough effort I will not fail; instead I will have to tacitly accept failure an integral part of the process. I’ll discuss this more later.
3. Vacuum Trap
No one is in possession of all truth. In each of us, not only do we have our own biases, and prejudices, but we are all subject to the limits of the experiences, assumptions and facts upon which we ascribe our understanding of “truth†to. Our understandings of “truth†are different from one another, and in their own unique ways, flawed. Among strong, free thinking collaborators, good ideas are more likely to be survive while bad ideas are more likely to be discarded. Collaboration, in effect, is idea Darwinism.
To illustrate the point, consider the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1789. As much as I admire Benjamin Franklin, not all of his ideas were great ones, and during the Constitutional Convention many of his proposals were ignored. Among his rejected ideas, was Franklin’s preference for a unicameral legislative branch. The idea of a bicameral legislative branch, with its House of Representatives and Senate, was not proposed by Franklin; however, once he understood it, he championed it, and was instrumental in getting the other delegates to adopt it into the Constitution. The best idea won, and as a result, the Constitution of the United States was ratified and became a successful and enduring document.
A system built on collaboration tends to work better compared to other systems. This is why capitalism works so well. It is also why, I believe, the non-degreed achievers have been able to succeed in America where in other places they may not have. The opportunity to contribute in America has been more open than in previous systems built on aristocracies, dictatorships or other government systems that limit the number and diversity of ideas of its people. Diversity of ideas is essential. After all, if you only collaborate with people who think like you, you might as well not collaborate with anyone at all.
In America, we’re wired for capitalism, which at its heart is a bottom up economic system of collaboration that reacts to need. Since America has only 5% of the population but is responsible about 50% of the innovation in the world (according to Bill Gates) innovations on the horizon will likely benefit us more than the rest of the world. This has been historically true from the invention of the light bulb, to advances in the aerospace industry, the automotive industry, the entertainment industry, the computer technology industry, and for that matter, modern democracy itself.
4. Not enough time trap
10,000 hours over a 5 to 10 year period is a lot of time to dedicate to anything. Yet to become an expert it must be done. The problem, I think, is that when we embark on a completely new skill, early success is elusive. This can be very discouraging, especially to those scripted to believe that either you have talent or you don’t. The remedy for this is to have faith in the process. If it helps, think of Vincent Van Gogh.
Van Gogh decided to become an artist when he was 27. Even though he had been around art as an art dealer, he had never done any serious study of the subject himself. After he decided to become an artist, he poured himself into it. A record of his journey is remarkably well preserved in his letters to his brother Theo. For about the first two years of his studies, as he was trying to master basic drawing skills, Van Gogh’s descriptions of his attempts revealed his frustration. The following are excerpts from his letters to his brother that illustrate his thoughts as he started his studies. Note the early lack of success and frustration he encountered:
September 7, 1880
For some time I have been scribbling drawings without making much progress, but recently it seems to me that it has been getting better, and I have good hopes that it will get better still.
September 24, 1880
So you see I am madly at work, but for the moment it is not producing any very satisfactory results. But I hope that these thorns will produce white blossoms in their day, and that this apparently sterile struggle is nothing but the labor of giving birth. First the pain, but afterwards the joy.
12-15 October 1881
Nature always starts by resisting the artist, but if you take her really seriously, you will not let yourself be upset by this resistance; on the contrary, it is an extra stimulus to conquer her, and at heart nature and a true artist are in tune with each other . . .And having wrestled and battled with nature for some time, she starts to be a little more cooperative and submissive. Not that I have reached that stage, no one is further from it than I believe myself to be, but I am beginning to make headway.
18 November 1881
To my regret there is still something hard and severe in my drawings.
12-16 January 1882
Mauve tells me that I will spoil at least some ten drawings before I learn how to wield a brush well. But beyond that point is a better future, so I carry on working with as much sang-froid as I can gather together and will not let myself be put off, even by mistakes.
It goes without saying that one can’t master the technique in a day.
14-18 March, 1882
I am decidedly no landscape painter.
15-27 April 1882
Tersteeg tells me: “Things were not going well with you before, and you failed, and now exactly the same is happening again.†Stop—no, it is quite different from before, and this argument is actually a fallacy.
. . . It is just because I have a draftman’s fist that I cannot keep away from drawing, and I ask you, from the day I first started to draw, have I ever doubted, or hesitated, or faltered? I think you know very well that I have soldiered on, and of course, the battle has gradually become hotter.
June 1882
Art is jealous and demands all our time and all our strength, and then when we dedicate these to it, it leaves rather a bitter taste to be taken for some kind of impractical person and I don’t know what else.
Well, we just have to try to battle on.
31 July 1882
Of the drawings I will show you now, I think only this: that they, I hope, will prove to you that I am not just staying at the same level, but progressing in a reasonable direction.
9 September 1882
I am doing my very best to make every effort, because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.
18 September 1882
It is with drawing more or less as with writing. When you learn to write as a child, you have a feeling that it is quite impossible that you will ever understand it, and it seems a miracle when you see the schoolmaster writing so fast. Nevertheless you get the hang of it in time. And I really believe that this is the way to learn to draw, that it will become just as easy as writing something down, and you need to have the proportions in your head and learn to see them in such a way that you can reproduce something you see at will, in a larger or smaller size.
After about the first two years, Van Gogh’s frustration with the learning process disappeared from his correspondence. He seemed to find great joy in the creative process after that. Even when he was frustrated with the learning process, he retained his faith in it. He had faith that he would eventually overcome the obstacles and be able to paint great things. In his life, he did over 1100 drawings and about 900 paintings. During the last 70 days of his life, he painted 70 canvases. He was even starting to gain critical acclaim for his work. His most famous paintings were created during the 9th and 10th year of his artistic odyssey. Even Van Gogh couldn’t find a shortcut to expertise.
Like Vincent Van Gogh, you must have faith in the learning process and anchor your studies to it long enough for it to bear fruit. In doing so, you can turn a small seed of aptitude into expertise that others may describe as genius. Do not be discouraged by a lack of progress early on, which is all but inevitable. Read, experiment and collaborate for 10,000 hours. If you avoid the traps you will unchain your brain.
I picked up a bookmark from the UPS store that reads:
100% of the proceeds benefit children in our community.
I recently wrote an essay about the importance of reading in the lives of famous Americans like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. If you have any doubt about how much reading can change a child’s life (and America’s destiny), take the time to read the article:
Link: Unchain Your Brain Part 2: Reading
Here is another essay I wrote about Frederick Douglass that demonstrates how he linked literacy to freedom:
Link: With High Hope, and a Fixed Purpose
We should all support the program in two ways:
1. Donate books at your UPS store.
2. Get a stack of bookmarks from your UPS store and ask your local bookstore to display them at the cash register.
Gannon Beck's Blog 