Malcolm Gladwell is famous for saying that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master something. But do you really need to put in that much time to become an excellent weaver?
No. (Thank goodness!)
Why? Because it’s not simply the amount of time you put in – it’s the quality of that time.
What matters is not experience – the number of hours put in – so much as “effortful study,” continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond your competence. By stretching your boundaries continually, you learn more, and faster, than by simply doing the same thing over and over again.
But effortful study means continually doing new things, striving just beyond your current skill level. That means making mistakes, because learning and practicing something new always comes with mistakes (lots of them!). That causes anxiety for many people (including weavers!).
Fortunately, there are two ways to alleviate this anxiety.
The first is to recognize that mistakes aren’t failures; they’re simply another way to learn. To learn effectively, you need to make friends with failure: approach your mistake with curiosity, not fear.
Towards this, I keep this note taped to the front of my loom:
Then, when I get upset with myself for making a mistake and “wasting” time or yarn, I can remind myself to approach the mistake with curiosity, not fear or anger. And then ask the questions that will make the mistake valuable.
The second way to get over your fear of making mistakes is simply to get used to making them. Once we get used to being in our comfort zone – where we feel comfortably competent, know what we’re doing, and don’t make mistakes – it’s easy to get stuck there, because doing new stuff means going into the scary world of incompetence and mistakes. Trying new things frequently is like stretching your muscles – a little uncomfortable but keeps you flexible and moving.
Now, this may seem crazy, but I practice being incompetent. To keep my comfort zone stretched, I actively seek out activities that I know nothing about, don’t expect to be good at, and feel I have no innate talent for. And, of course, I’m terrible at it when I start. That’s the whole idea – to learn that it’s totally okay to be terrible at things, and to practice “curiosity not fear”. Eventually, I get good at whatever I’m practicing, and then it’s time to move on and be terrible at something else.
As an example, I took up cycling to practice incompetence, because good cyclists tend to be tall and lean and I am short and wide. Unsurprisingly, I was always a slow cyclist – but I enjoyed it. I eventually started doing endurance cycling events in costume – which was a lot of fun:
At some point, I got good at endurance cycling, and it wasn’t a stretch any more. Time to go be bad at something else.
Similarly, with weaving, I try to practice different kinds of weaving, to keep finding areas where I’m new and incompetent. Since I’m a shaft-loom weaver, I tried inkle weaving a few years ago:
Just think! There are so many different types of weaving that I could be incompetent in something new every week of the year without ever leaving the craft. What a delight!
Do you have to stretch yourself all the time? Of course not. But trying something new frequently, and practicing curiosity about mistakes, enables you to become a better weaver – and you won’t have to spend 10,000 hours doing it.
Here’s a copy of my “Curiosity Not Fear” note – print it out and put it on your loom!
From the Weavers Toolbox:
