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36. The Making of a Thing - published 18.12.2013

In essence, this blog is a response to the 'it's alright for you brigade' who are the people who believe in overnight successes and the first time they come across you, they think that you've done nothing to learn your trade or earned the role. 

Sadly, it seems that this is a phenomenon that is becoming more and more common, at least for a while, amongst younger practitioners who don’t seem to see the time, effort and graft it takes to become in any way proficient or successful in any line of work. It led on to this mantra that I have from teaching where we always suggest 'success is measured in decades'. 

When Paul Weller wrote That's Entertainment  the story goes it took 9 minutes. 

For those of you old enough to remember the 1980's it became an iconic song of The Jam.

Of course, it didn't take 9 minutes for Weller to write That's Entertainment, he had been purposefully playing music and writing songs for well over 10 years before he came home drunk from the pub that night and wrote a classic.

Nobody who has never before picked up a guitar comes home from the pub and writes That's Entertainment.

When you set out to build or make your thing it takes 10 years at the very least.

That will either be 10 years of purposeful practice in some skill or talent before you 'explode onto the scene' or it will 10 years after you started to build your project, your Taj Mahal, your monument to society. This is all explained quite clearly in 'The Talent Code' by Daniel Coyle or 'Bounce' by Matthew Syed.

Boris Becker had a tennis court in his back garden for 10 years before he won Wimbledon, Andre Agassi used to hit 2,500 tennis balls a day (a million a year) it was more like 20 years before Tiger Woods won a major from the time that he started playing golf. In the middle of building your thing no-one will see the countless early mornings in the dark on the river for Steve Redgrave or the countless sessions late at night trying to make sense of your dental business, it is all the same.

In the end, when you arrive and you reach the culmination of building your thing the moment of joy or recognition maybe brief (although very sweet) but it will be worth it for the journey.

Blog post number: 1536