Crafting New Problems

I was fortunate enough to hear Richard Sennett talking about 'craft' recently, and his ideas struck a real chord with me. His basic thesis is that today we teach people how to solve problems mechanically ("operational skills"), but we don't teach them how to identify new problems, set their own standards for achievement and be creative about deciding what needs doing next ("craft skills"). And the result of this, he believes, is a massive de-skilling of society.

Looking back at the Enlightenment (a topic of great interest to me at the moment after my work with the RSA), Sennett identifies two different strands of Enlightenment thought. The "Northern European" strand, draws on Rousseau and Kant to assert the primacy of the mind over the physical world, the angel part of us to 'transcend' into pure reason and nobility. The second strand is embodied by the RSA and the pragmatists, who valued action in the world alongside intellectual endeavour - a life of the hands as well as the head. It is his belief that we have privileged the former at the expense of the latter, and turned ourselves into machines in the process.

Rousseau, for example, argued for the "ideal parent", rational and complete - but his opponent Madame d'Epiney said that this "parent machine" ensures that nothing is ever good enough. Today, we assess our children in schools for their ability to find the right answer; we ask "who is the best at closure?" We measure them against an absolute right, rather than what is good enough for them. It is an abstraction that robs them of their humanity, their sociability. Finding the "right" answer denies individual expression, turns us into robots. Training us to solve problems actually leaves us "de-skilled".

According to Sennett, the key principle of "craft" is that it doesn't seek to find the right answer. Instead, it values the process of finding and solving problems, and therefore the ongoing joy of finding new things to explore. Craft values humanity because it values doing a job well for its own sake. Skilled people value "interesting wrong answers", new hypotheses. In other words, there is value in doing something badly because it helps us learn and improve.

It feels contradictory for a blog about "doing things badly" to espouse craftsmanship, when the word implies so much about quality and doing a job well. But could it actually be that our obsession with finding the one right answer in fact deprives us of our ability to learn and improve? If we set ourselves up against abstracted and inhuman standards, we position ourselves - in Ruskin's words - between "the twin crevices of achievement and despair." It is only by pursuing our crafts for their own sake, repeating actions without concern for failure, that we will get better than before.

As Sennett says, "we need a story of how people get better, rather than an image." Right answers close subjects down. Doing something badly is the start of a conversation.

Good uses for e-learning, part 1

Current debates about technology and education tend to focus on how to replace face-to-face teaching with technological solutions, so a lot of my work lately has been about getting people away from screens and talking face to face. But I've just had my first experience of successful online learning, so I thought by way of balance I should share that too.

I've been learning The Entertainer for the past couple of weeks - a personal mission of mine since the age of seven, since my piano teacher refused to teach it to me because it was "too difficult". (I quit the piano some weeks later and didn't play again until I was well into my twenties.)

I don't read sheet music, so I explored YouTube and discovered Shawn Cheek's how-to videos. And, surprisingly, after watching, playing a bit, watching again, practising and so on, it's helped me learn very quickly. If he was teaching me face to face it would have taken too long (and cost me a fortune), but this way I can watch him play it as many times as I want and learn at my own pace. For a change, learning online has worked better than having the pressure of a teacher sat next to me.

So, that's my first taste of when e-learning can be better than face-to-face: when I need someone to show me how to do something over and over again until I get it. I still need a teacher to look at what I'm doing and give me feedback though, so personal connection is still really important. But still, it explains the huge popularity how-to videos on the net these days.

One thing is odd though: now Shawn keeps 'friending' me on Facebook. It feels really weird. I've never met him or even spoken to him, but he's helped me learn. So what's our relationship now? I really don't know.

If e-learning works (for some things), then my next question is how does it affect, enrich, or replace our social relationships? And how can we take this into account when we build an education system for the coming century? Or design how social technology dovetails into our lives.

Working for yourself

I was fortunate to meet uber-blogger Stowe Boyd a few days ago, with whom I enjoyed good food, better wine and lots of excellent conversation about almost everything except "work".

Reading Stowe's blog afterwards, my attention was drawn to this post about working as a "creative". The feeling that work is an expression of your personality (which all too few people seem to feel), is intractably linked to the feeling that it's really important to be good at it. If you're bad at your work, and your work is an expression of yourself, then it's almost as if you're a bad person. In the areas where I associate my identity with your work, I am also invariably far more upset when I get it wrong, or sense my personal limitations. In many ways, it would be a lot easier to be indifferent to the whole thing and live a "quiet life".

Mastering the fear of failure (oh dear, what an appallingly self-helpy phrase) seems to be vital if you want to pursue your passions to any professional level. And that doesn't always just mean mastering your own self-doubt, but those of others too. Stowe puts it very eloquently here:

Paderewski, the physicist, once said, "Before I was a genius, I was a drudge." There is a lot of slogging involved. And others, generally, will not understand: especially before you have invested the full ten years. "You'll never sell a book!" "You call that music?" "That's the dumbest design I have ever seen!" "Keep your day job."

Another good reason to work apart from others, so you don't have to hear all that negativity. Close the door, and sharpen your pencil.

Hmmm, so have I discovered my first tension between the title and subtitle of my blog? In order to have the courage to do things badly, is it necessary to isolate yourself in the pursuit of your passion? Well, possibly. I'm not sure if I want to close the door and pursue my solipsistic pleasures alone, I'd rather use my drudgery to bring me closer to the people around me. That, it seems to me, is surely the point of creativity? Hence my plea to my friends, to my society, is for us to celebrate the doing of things badly, so that we don't need to be bad at things in secret any more.

Because no-one, no matter how brilliant, has ever learnt anything without first being bad at it.

I had a good chat with Stowe about my attempts to learn the piano, and he has a great theory about learning a craft which he calls the "10,000 hour rule". It seems that if you want to truly master a skill, your chances are geometrically enhanced if you practice for more than 10,000 hours. Or, to put it another way, mastering a craft is basically the process of doing it badly a hell of a lot. So if you don't take pleasure in doing it badly, it's not really your passion. And if you don't like it when other people do things badly, you're probably missing something important.

I'm off to play the piano now. And I'm leaving the door open.

Playing the piano badly

A very happy New Year to you all. I hope that you have all resolved to do more things badly in 2008? My resolution this year is to have more fun, which I shall begin doing badly for now and work upwards. Any suggestions for what constitutes "fun" would be very welcome. I'll keep you posted on how I get on.

My main "fun" activity so far this year has been playing the piano. I've flirted with learning the piano for many years, ever since I gave it up, aged seven, after a year of lessons. I grew up with huge admiration and quiet envy for jazz pianists, but I was always put off trying it myself: it was too technical, took too much work, and in any case I lacked any natural affinity with formal musical notation. So I didn't touch it for years, despite admiring those who did. The piano was clearly something that only very good musicians could master. I stuck to the guitar, with the other scruffs.

But a couple of years ago I realised something. The piano is basically just a big box that makes noise. Everything else is just stories we tell about it. Sure, if I want to be the next Dinu Lipatti or Keith Jarrett (and I'd love to be), knowing the theory and recommended techniques is important; but supposing I just want to play for my own amusement? Why can't I just make it up as I go along?

Each piano is a predictable system, and any predictable system can be learned by trial and error. Since I made this realisation, two things have happened: firstly, and most importantly, I've started playing the piano. Lots. And I'm loving it. So that in itself is cause for celebration. And secondly, I've had a series of polite arguments with almost every pianist I know about why I'm not just learning to read music and do it properly. I may well do just that at some point. But the answer, for now, is this:

When I was a little younger and I wanted to be a writer, my father said something very helpfully blunt to me: "all writers have one thing in common: they write. And you don't." Wanting to do something, for me at least, isn't the same as actually doing it. If I wanted to be a writer so much, why couldn't I enjoy the simple pleasure of writing a few lines in a notebook? We should enjoy the process, not just the end result.

In the case of writing, my current strategy is to write a blog - badly - and see where that takes me. With the piano, what unstuck me was the sheer impetuous joy of refusing to learn the boring bits and focussing on what I love, which is improvising by ear. I have resolved to take as many shortcuts as possible on my way to a basic level of competance. I have chosen role models (a key component of "sociable learning") who were way beyond my capability (Keith Jarrett, Thelonius Monk, Brad Mehldau, Dr John) and I've tried to impersonate them. And not only am I learning far more quickly than I expected, but I'm also really enjoying myself.

That's more than can be said for those listening to me of course, and at some point, I hope that I will qualify to "do it properly". But I am quietly hopeful that I can get to a respectable level without forcing myself to learn like everybody else. It's all about keeping the faith. I borrowed my dad's Teach Yourself Jazz Piano book over Christmas, and found the following in the introduction: "how many times do parents tell a child: 'Stop making that noise and play something properly'? Conquering this feeling of guilt is a prerequisite of learning to play jazz: for it is only in experiment that the association between note and sound can be learned."

So on I go, but in the interests of sociablism, I have also resolved for 2008 to find myself a piano swami who can guide me in my defiant approach to the instrument. The word educate, whilst having its roots in the raising of children, is related to the Latin ducere, to lead: it is the process of drawing out what is inside, not simply of giving instruction. Too often we forget this, or else perhaps we need a new term for this process of educetion (ah, another crime against the English language - Andrew Keen would be so proud). I would like someone to help draw out my inner pianist. All applicants please write to this address, etc. and so on.

So, the next time you want to learn something, repeat after me: I already have this in me, otherwise I wouldn't feel an affinity with it. So what is the best way of drawing it out of myself? Start from there and you can't go wrong. Or rather, you can go wrong as much as you like and as long as you're happy, who cares?! So happy learning, happy noise-making, and a very happy New Year to you all.

x Andy x

How's my blogging?

Bless me father, it has been five weeks since my last confession. Having managed a fairly regular stream of posts of variable quality, I finally succumbed to the pressure of work and have neglected you, my dear reader. I am a bad blogger.

But the truth is, I've got a bit stuck. When I initially started this blog, I set out (amongst other things) to teach myself how to blog by doing it badly. Last year I'd never really blogged at all, but now I'm blogging here, Sociability, School of Everything and even Skillset. I've got so many of the damn things, it feels like a job. So I feel that now, with the year-end approaching and having got a bit stuck, the best thing I can do now is reflect on what I've learned so far.

When I started The New Sociablism, it was initially just a channel for organising my own thoughts, a way for me to get my ideas down without worrying about the overall structure of how they fit together. So I've learned that I am capable of churning out a lot of ideas if I give myself a fixed structure to work in. Mission one accomplished. But the thing that really challenged me was when I looked at the stats and realised people were actually reading it. Not just a few friends, but actual, real people around the world, deliciousing me, commenting, even subscribing. How strange, I thought. I really don't know what I'm doing. So, lesson two: if you build it, they will come, and other people's perceptions of your value may be very different your own. Which is nice to know.

But in the past month or so, something has shifted. For some reason, I got it into my head that if people value what I'm writing, somehow the quality needs to be maintained. I don't want to disappoint people by doing a crap post. Suddenly, blogging felt like work.

It's pretty ironic that I set out to write about how doing things badly can bring us closer together, and yet I'm now worrying that I need to raise and maintain 'professional' standards in order to keep people interested. The pressure of external attention has triggered all kinds of learned behaviours in my head about how I must behave. The idea that I should just carry on shambling along feels risky, now that I have something to lose.

Even now, I'm looking back at this post and thinking "is this really good enough to publish?" Am I rambling? And is it 'learned' or 'learnt'? I think of all the people who might read this through blogger, or feedburner, or blogfriends, and I find myself fearful of criticism, afraid of failure.

How fascinating!

So, lessons three and four. (3) I am quite obviously writing about 'sociablism' and doing things badly because it helps me unpick these issues in my own mind. And (4), my fear of being a bad blogger has led me to stop posting for over a month, in a perfect example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've turned my hobby into 'work', and stopped doing it. Good. Useful to get that learnt.

As for the quality or otherwise of my blogging over this year, well, I guess it shouldn't really matter, but I am interested. So I throw myself on the mercy of my readership. How's my blogging? Call 0800-sociablism, or just leave me a comment below. Positive or negative, it would be nice to hear from you all. And bad blogger or no, I shall keep on blogging badly next year, although with a little more regularity than recently. Happy reading!

Talking to my builder about play

I've been having some building work done on my flat this past fortnight (hence the infrequency of posts recently). When not choking on dust or searching for clean socks, I've been having some very interesting conversations with my Argentinian builder, Sergio.

Every summer Sergio comes to London to build kitchens and bathrooms, and then goes back to Argentina to live like a king with his wife and kids. The first thing that surprised me about him (aside from his punctuality) is that he's actually a qualified geologist. He used to work in the oil-drilling industry, but the financial crisis of 2001/2 left him unemployed despite having "commercially valuable" skills. So, he came to visit his sister over here, did some work on a few friends' flats and houses, and hasn't looked back.

What really intrigued me about his story was how he acquired his building skills. He's never had any formal training or instruction, but his father ran a builders' supplies merchants and he grew up playing with the materials. At the age of six he build a twenty-foot racetrack for his remote control car, out of wood and concrete. As he grew up he treated his parent's house as a playground, moving walls and redecorating just to see what things would look like. (His first act on inspecting my kitchen was to tear my bedroom wall down and move it 15cm to the left.) When he came to England, all he needed to turn his skills into a career was to learn the conventions for building in the UK. For that, he needed people here to teach him the rules - but he learned much more quickly because he'd taught himself so much already.

Learning starts with curiosity. If we have that, and the space to explore it, then we can learn. Sometimes we need teachers to help us learn "the right way" of doing things, and peers to help us reflect on our experiences. But Sergio's story suggests that if you want to find your own way of doing something, self-guided play is the best place to start. And once you've got that, learning the conventions is much easier. So perhaps we should be spending more time and money encouraging curiosity in our children, and not just "teaching" them things?

Of course, if my kitchen falls apart in six months, I may revise my opinion. But I'd trust someone who loves what they do over someone qualified going through the motions any day.

When did you learn how to fail?

I've just been reading (via Nick Temple) Bill Lucas's NESTA article, Learning is a Risky Business. The line that first caught my eye was, of course, "it is smart to make mistakes", but I was also particularly interested in his discussion of risk, which was touched on in the comments on my previous post.

I agree with Bill that "without risk there can be no real learning". Risk of failure is often enough to stop people learning, experimenting, trying new things, and I think a key part of the educational process is supporting people through this. Yet sadly our current education system only seems to reinforce this fear of failure.

Seth Godin expresses the problem eloquently in his book Purple Cow:

Where did you learn how to fail? If you're like most Americans, you learned in first grade. That's when you started figuring out that the safe thing to do was to colour inside the lines, don't ask too many questions in class ...
We run our schools like factories. We line up kids in straight rows, put them in batches (called grades), and work very hard to ensure there are no defective parts. Nobody standing out, falling behind, running ahead, making a ruckus.
Playing it safe. Following the rules. Those seem like the best ways to avoid failure.

The need for risk therefore seems to me a pressing one for all of us. However, that doesn't mean risk is inherently good either. People aren't stupid: we avoid risks for perfectly good reasons.

As Anthony observed in his recent comment here, "ad hoc is fine, but not if people get harmed in the process." The need for risk is not served by recklessness. Dougald's suggestion on his blog is also a fine one: "rather than celebrating not caring, let's celebrate choosing what to care about." In this case, I submit that we can choose to value risk, and also value people's fear of it - and still try new things.

So here is my proposal: rather than managing the risk of failure, why not embrace it? When you do something, ask yourself: if I fail, will I still be glad I did this? That doesn't mean playing it safe, it means enjoying the process, regardless of the outcome. If our goal is not simply to succeed, but also to travel well, then failure becomes part of the experience rather than an unsavoury but inevitable consequence of "progress". And perhaps then we would take better risks, and give more attention to those affected by our actions.

Or to put it another way, if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly

What's in a name?

A few people have said to me that they don't quite understand the title and sub-title of this blog , and indeed they may appear a little incongruous. If I'm so interested in business, politics and society, they ask, why am I talking about doing things badly? What's so great about doing things badly anyway? And what's the connection with "Sociablism"?

Well, allow me to explain...

1. "Bad" is relative. We are often put off doing things we care about because of a perception of inadequacy relative to external standards. Often these standards are actually our own judgements, and we are harsh on ourselves; others may value what we do even if we don't. I don't consider myself to be a very good "blogger", but some people seem to enjoy what I write. If I censor myself, my contribution stops.
2. Good is dull. In this crowded world, we don't need millions of people aspiring to do the same things. Often the thing that you think is bad about what you're doing is actually what makes it stand out from the crowd. Bad is different, more human, more fun.
   
3. Doing things badly is actually the second stage of learning. We move from unconscious incompetence through to "conscious incompetence" - doing things badly - before we move onto conscious and unconscious competence. If we don't respect this second stage, how can we ever really learn?
4. Celebrating doing things badly gets us out of the standards trap. If we only value things done well, we are faced with the choice of praising others falsely for a quality which is in fact lacking, or crushing their passions by imposing external standards on them. Many young people these days seem to have unrealistic expectations of their own skill levels, both positive and negative. If you celebrate doing things badly, you can give someone encouragement without creating false perceptions.
5. The things we do have important incidental effects on our community development, social and cultural systems, mental and physical health and relationship with the environment. The things we do have all kinds of unintended consequences, good and bad. When people in rehab weave baskets, it's not because they need baskets. If we only do the things we are "good at", we will stop doing many of the things that imperceptibly nurture us and keep us healthy.
   

I believe that doing things badly provides a simple route out of some of the traps of the modern world, and moves us towards a more playful, sociable and constructive space. This is the root of "Sociablism": praising things not for their quality, but for the positive effects they have on our lives, both as individuals and as a society.

Over time I'll explore what this actually means in practice for politics, society, education and business. But for now, I'll leave you with the words of the great Samuel Beckett:

No matter. Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.

Drawing animals badly

I spent some time this weekend drawing animals, thanks to some nice step-by-step guides in the newspaper and the encouragement of my friend Charlie. I drew an elephant, a giraffe, a rhino, and a lion. I was joined in this activity by my girlfriend, a couple of friends and my mum and dad (who did an excellent frog and eagle respectively). I'd heartily recommend it, especially if you sign them with your left hand and put them on the fridge when you're done.

I was amazed by the fear that ran through me when I started drawing the first one. The challenge of a blank piece of paper conjured up images not of possibility but of fear of failure, of getting it wrong and looking silly. Every one of us introduced our first drawing with some comment like "this is so hard" or "I was never any good at art". I was never much good at art in school, although I've always enjoyed it. I'll happily look at someone else's drawings, but it's been years since I actually did anything artistic. Art for me had become one of those "look, don't touch" activities, like lion-taming or accounting - best left to the experts.

Sitting around this weekend with friends and family, comparing horses and rabbits, I realised what I've been missing. Drawing things is wonderfully sociable. Playful, in fact. I wonder how I managed to forget that? And I also wonder what else I've stopped doing because I don't think I can do it well enough?

I'm much better at drawing animals now than I was last week. Perhaps learning is a process of doing things badly.