Craft Knowledge: Undercurrents

The results of craftwork have been admired since antiquity; but not always the doing. The ancient Greeks openly disdained hand work. A Chinese Emperor from around the Eleventh Century made a point of trying to learn some of the trade secrets of the artisans within his realm, whose work attracted his admiration and fascination; to little avail. Visitors to pioneer villages, where demonstrations are given of various pioneer crafts that once were common to farm communities, also draw curiosity; but perhaps not to the degree that would lead to genuine appreciation.

Nicholai A. Bernstein, the Russian neurophysiologist whose work I've discussed before, put it right when he said that watching a master at work fools us into feeling that we could easily replicate what we are seeing. However, without having the advantage of schooling or self-learning, and 10,000 hours of meaningful practice, we would make as big fools of ourselves as we would by going into a tournament foursome which included Tiger Woods with the media following behind (as one Toronto executive learned the hard way some years ago).

It's not likely that a casual chat with a guest craftworker would make you any wiser than the emperor of a millenia ago, and for a very good reason. The craftworker's wisdom, like an iceberg, lies predominently below the surface. What the intelligentia know is largely 'an open book', and someone with enough time (as did Karl Marx and others)could spend a decade in good libraries and emerge well educated, as long as we were reasonably selective and productive. And we could I would assume be able to articulate what we had learned and write about it. But craft knowledge is in contrast predominantly tacit knowledge, meaning that even craftworkers don't always know what they know, unless they are exceptionally self-aware, self-monitoring, about their skills and the reasons for their selections and methods.

As a brain function, intellectual activity centers in the area behind the forehead, the frontal lobes. That is where conscious, deliberate thought takes place. If I intend to do something, my frontal lobes are active, making decisions and choices; but when I awake in the morning, get ready for work, mercifully getting out of bed and performing morning rituals does not require my deciding what to do. (Age helps too!) I'll have checked the clock a few times, then find myself doing one of the several things needful to be ready to go out the door.

Few craftworkers or artisans write about the experience of "watching themselves working"; thereby seeing what others watching them see. I've had other tradesmen say to me, "That's not the first time you've done that!", meaning, the work I (like any experienced worker) was doing flowed, without undue hesitation, whereas they themselves wouldn't have known even what material to buy for the job, without planning. Therefore, planning a small electrical installation would have been taxing on the frontal cortex ("That gave me a headache!") whereas 35 years experience means it presents no challenge. Occasionally bosses, even highly educated ones, can't ask you to do something they can plan themselves. Sometimes, humourous, sometimes frustrating.

(in progress)

Self-Awareness of Mastery

I don't know how wide spread self-awareness is, of individuals being aware of what they are doing; but I do feel acheiving mastery is very much universally experienced to some degree.

One of the things that separates craftworkers from others, apart from seeing visible results at the end of the day, is owning one's own skills, ability and competence. A factory or office worker, and also a great number of professional people toe the line every day to someone else's beck and call and are very conscious of other's expectations. This is true regardless of how good they are at what they do.

The experience of mastery came vividly to me one Saturday morning when I was doing maintenance at a Burger King restaurant. I did all building maintenance and repairs for a group of four family-owned restaurants on a part time basis for several years. On this particular morning, I'd gone to this store and been given the list of things needing fixing. The biggest concern was a broken section of wall behind a large kitchen sink, where the drywall had rotted, and there were a number of loose tile. To do repairs like this I'd learned to find methods to get the job done in one shot. I removed loose tile beyond the damaged area, cut back the drywall to a nearby stud and replace with 1/2" plywood, clean up the tile and glue them back in place with PL premium and grout and clean up. The job was 1 hr. 20 min. from home, so multiple trips was out of the question.

This was the first time I'd taken this approach, and once I'd gotten going on the task, getting ready to install the plywood oon the cutaway area, I had a jolting realization of wondering how i could "know" what to do. I do electrical work every day, had though I'd only seen the task an hour before I had arrived at a workable solution.

Being a novice is a mix of small victories, and uphill efforts to do what others around can do easily. You often have the feeling of working extremely hard; may think on some tasks you are the hardest working individual in the organisation. You may, though, be confusing effort with results. All part of the process; leading to the point at which most of the hard struggles to accomplish complex goals are behind you.

I would imagine Paul prefers to have work ahead of him, so that he usually has time to think about work, at least I do. You can start a job, unseen on Monday morning, but if I have a couple days, when I do come to take tools out of the truck I'm right ready to get at the work and it goes easier. And by 10:00 A.M. the work is going well, the customer expresses suprise at how much has been done, and you don't even feel like stopping for coffee. That's bliss.