I grew up in the 1980s. Hence one of the most formative movies of my teen years was the Hollywood classic Karate Kid. For those youngsters today, there was indeed a Karate Kid movie back in the 80s long before the dreadful 2010 sequel was made. Anyway, one of the more memorable scenes in the movie involves the protagonist, Mr Miyagi, having his young protege, Daniel LaRusso, clean and polish numerous cars. Upon asking how this work would actually help him become a karate master, Mr Miyago launches into the famous wax on, wax off scene – Daniel goes through the motions of polishing a car and sees how those movements are useful in a karate context.
The essence of the scene is that it takes significant time to learn a skill. Whether that skill is physical or mental, wiring the muscles and synapses to perform a task without even thinking takes hours and hours of time. Indeed, in his book, Outliers, popular columnist and author Malcolm Gladwell talks at length about the fact that it takes 10,000 hours to master any particular task.
It’s a notion that I totally agree with. As many readers will know, I completed an apprenticeship after dropping out of school. And while I’m not a particularly good electrician, the 8000 hours I undertook – as apprenticeships were back then – really gave me a solid and firm basis in the trade. The muscle memory I developed means that now, over 30 years later, I can still wire a switch and terminate cables without really thinking about it.
I’ve been thinking about muscle memory more recently as I reflect upon changes in society and a change in the expectations of young people. Of course, all young people are impatient. It’s a trait that, throughout time, has been typical of youth. Impatience is, at some levels, a good trait. It drives innovation and agility. But it strikes me that in modern times we have taken impatience to a new and possibly unhelpful level – we have a modern trend in which immediacy is the expectation. People believe that success happens overnight. That we can achieve our objectives almost instantaneously.
I often describe to people how the first few years of Cactus were spent. When the nascent business first moved to Christchurch, the three of us who owned it all lived in the factory in a less than salubrious way. We didn’t have the ability to pay ourselves while we put everything back into the business. So our budget was set accordingly and Rob’s “noodle thing” was the height of culinary excitement for us.
I don’t tell this in order to gain some sort of sympathy or perpetuate some kind of false legend of the way things were back then. Rather, my point is that in order to build something for the long term, one puts in the hard yards and accepts the sacrifices in the short term.
It was only a generation ago, that building a business, learning your craft or indeed, gaining a trade qualification was generally accepted to take a number of years. Apprentice builders knew that for the first few years, they would do the worst jobs, earn the worst money and generally be treated as the dogsbody. The expectation was that they would learn and suck up skills from those around them. The sacrifice would mean that once they had finished their time, they would have a marketable skill that would pretty much ensure that for the rest of their lives, if they wanted it, they could get work.
There’s something almost poetic, about this slow approach towards life and development. It’s something we’ve really lost in today’s fast-paced climate, where the model, at least for business, is to come up with an idea, go out and raise squillions of dollars, hire a bunch of smart young things, build with amazing velocity, and then sell seemingly only a few months later, for lots and lots of money to make everyone involved rich. Sure, that generates wealth and delivers huge amounts of agility. That is impressive to see. But I’m not sure whether it’s practical for a longer time horizon.
I’ve said before that while I haven’t ever really worked as an electrician. I don’t at all regret having completed an apprenticeship. It taught this highly impatient individual the benefit of slowing down, taking some time and actually learning a craft. It also taught him the idea that sacrifice in the short and even medium term is kind of normal and that, all things being equal, it’s an approach that will build beneficial outcomes in the longer term.
Just like Mr Miyagi said: Wipe on, wipe off.
