An online student of mine told me once that he got his woodworking information from the internet. This internet had informed him that woodworking was supposed to be easy. Everyone on-line said so. I felt bad for him.
He had seen techniques on camera and most every time they were made with no mistakes and sometimes they even sped it up so the idea was that it was not only easy but quick to do. Or so this internet implied. He had to disagree with both ideas. Woodworking for him was hard and slow.
Welcome to woodworking. It is slow work. It does require patience. But with the right approach, it can be a source of great reward. Adjusting one’s sights at the outset helps. Getting quality information also matters.
The purpose of the Internet is to convince you, first and foremost, to come back to the Internet. It is eye candy, a drug we willingly ingest. I am no different than you in this regard. It is very difficult to avoid. But I think it’s important to point out that the internet lies to us. The ‘experts’ are there to make a living off of clicks. More clicks, more dollars. It has nothing to do with accurate information or borrowed or misinterpreted information. It’s about clicks. What creates more clicks? That’s what I’ll do.
It is a simple equation but does not factor in, for the non-paying and often gullible audience, that information on the internet is not vetted. You have no idea if the person behind the bench in his grandpa jeans and aw shucks attitude has built anything more than the set behind him. Oftentimes the ‘expert’ has no more experience than the other ‘experts’, he has just spent more time tuning up his good looking shop and setting up better camera angles. It is a remarkable occurrence for us all now. The barely trained and new instructing the new and untrained in a centuries old field of study but with little to no experience in that field. And most folks believe they’re being told the truth!
I went to two different woodworking fairs last year and both had ‘influencers’ speaking there. They had no formal training. They showed no portfolio of work. They even gave classes in how to become an influencer. Not how to learn woodworking, but how to become a paid personality. Do you see the disconnect there? Let me show you how to make money influencing without real knowledge, without experience, without any veracity really. Because today we have the greatest moneymaker for every wannabe out there. Cue music: the internet.
This is our world today. If you, the viewer, do not take the time to vet your source, you can fall prey to some spurious information. [I do get great info however on fixing my washing machine or how to clean hard alkaline stains. One has to be choosy about the source that’s all.]
To watch an expert or master at work, things do seem easy for them. That is because after the first 10,000 hours of learning the basics they put in another 10,000 hours learning what they really need to know. The ten thousand hours idea, for those who know, is only a start. It’s another lie really as it takes years of practice to get really good at anything: baseball, playing the guitar, cutting dovetails. No different. That many hours is perhaps three years of practice. I asked a group of Portland surgeons I lectured once if they were competent doctors after three years. They all shook their head No. Folks want to skip the practice part now and be good in a few weekends.
This is the other gift of the internet. It fools us into believing that everything is easy. Just click here and find out. Take this two hour course and learn the shortcuts. It’s not about the way the world actually works. It takes effort and discipline in any field to get to the beginning of competency. Then it takes more practice to get good and years later to look up from your chosen art and say, ‘Hmm. I do know something.’
That’s the irony of influencers. They imply or boast or lie that they know it all. The true master says they don’t know nearly enough yet. With mastery comes humility and an awareness of how much more there is to know in their particular room of study. It seems like such a small door at first when you step into that room. Over time you discover how much more there is to learn.
So why even try, one might wonder, if it takes so long? The reason is because if you stay on this journey, your reward will be much greater than a brief fling with an idea. It will transform the way you work, and it will transform the way you interact and live in this parlous world today. It’s a good journey to take.