[…] Whether it’s coding, cooking or gardening, people intrinsically desire to achieve excellence at their craft.
This desire to build, create and get more competent at something is why Benjamin Franklin taught himself to write by translating magazine articles into poetry and then back into prose. It’s why Bill Bradley taught himself to dribble a basketball by taping cardboard to the bottom of his glasses so he had to rely more on intuition than on sight. It’s why Marcel Proust rewrote portions of “Remembrance of Things Past” from his death bed. Even while in agony, breathing his last breath, he wanted his work to be better, to get it right.
When you see people ensconced in their craft, you’ll notice that they are often living what I’ve come to think of as a Zone 2 life, after the exercise trend. They are not manic; they are persistent. They’re not burning out with frantic energy, but they are just plowing their furrow, a little bit farther, day after day.
They live with an offensive spirit. They are drawn by some positive attraction, not driven by a fear of failure. They perceive obstacles as challenges, not threats. On their good days, they’ve assigned themselves the right level of difficulty. Happiness is usually not getting what you want or living with ease; it is living, from one hour to the next, at a level of just manageable difficulty.
By the time you’ve reached craftsman status you don’t just love the product, you love the process, the tiny disciplines, the long hours, the remorseless work. You may want to be a rock star, but if you don’t love the arduous process of making music and touring, you won’t succeed. The craftsman has internalized knowledge of the field so she can work by intuition, using her repertoire of moves, relying on hunches, not rules. W.H. Auden captured it perfectly:
You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation,
you have only to watch his eyes:
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,
wear the same rapt expression,
forgetting themselves in a function.
How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.
— David Brooks, from “A Surprising Route to the Best Life Possible” (NY Times, March 25, 2025)
