The main review I got from the previous article was “If comparison is relative, then how do we get better?”
That wasn’t the purpose of the previous article. It was just to show how most comparisons seem within reach but are actually not. And how most of the comparisons which seem very easy are the ones that matter.
This statement is important. The easiest ones are the ones that matter the most. We will come back to this after a short break.
Tragic Backstory….
Long long ago, I made a carrot cake. I love carrot cake. It’s not too sweet (since I’m the one who’s making it, I make it how it want), has a great texture, and is 90% carrot, practically more carrot than cake (Hey, I’m the one making it!). And since I was the one who made it, it was absolutely delicious! Ahem ahem. I took the cake to my friends’ place and they were like 😳. And one of them asked me to teach them how to bake.
Nothing to be shocked about so far. We got the ingredients for a chocolate cake and we baked it with a little effort, most of it by my friend, me just guiding on the side and licking the emptied bowls. And the cake turned out incredibly beautiful on top of being tasty.
The interesting part starts now. After eating the cake, they mention how hard it is to bake. I just go ???. We had just baked a beautiful layered chocolate cake with 5-6 ingredients after following a recipe on the internet but somehow baking was still too much to understand…
The first cake I baked was an even more complex chocolate cake. Yet, I didn’t think it was difficult. I had my fair shares of ’This didn’t turn out the way I wanted to’ but never ‘I find it hard‘. So, I set out to list things that I found different between my friend and me. It was my attitude.
- The cake wasn’t the first thing I baked. I baked a lot of bread and veggies and meat before. It wasn’t a wonderful story of curiosity but one of desperation[1]When you are stuck in a foregin land in the middle of the night with an egg pan, one aluminum plate, a sack of potatoes, butter, salt, pepper and cheese, you soon learn baked potatoes are manna from … Continue reading. Things will seem out of reach until you familiarize yourself with it.
- You need a strong motive to do something which is new. My reason was again desperation[2]Why did I even have that aluminum plate? Thank my grandma..
- Starting with a can-do attitude. I always think I can do anything though when it comes to doing the thing, I’m scared.
- I learnt the science behind baking. Since I baked to suit my tastes, I needed to modify the recipes by a lot which needed me to know how to modify them. Baking is more science than art. And unless you know the ins and outs of something, you truly don’t know it.
- Learning science is sometimes too much for practical purposes. But knowing the right way to bake is important for the cake to turn out right. I’m not patient when I cook since the reason I eat is for hunger, not taste. So, it doesn’t turn out great. Doing the right steps and doing the steps right is important.
- Finally, I baked a lot. Be prepared to put in the blood, sweat and tears.
End of intermission…
You must have learnt a lot about the importance of attitude and the type of attitude required when doing something. Let’s talk about my cake again. My cake looks and tastes beautiful because it is complete. It would seem absurd to make the cake out of pure whipped cream and nothing else, even though the cream is the most perfect cream in the world. A cake with all the ingredients and layers makes for a decent taste compared to a cake with even one ingredient missing.
When doing something, keep it simple enough that you can complete, focusing on the important things first. Completion is more important than quality with all other factors equated.
TL; DR: Completion = Confidence
Let’s bring our focus to my cake again. My cake looks beeeauuuutiful. Ahem Ahem. If you take a slice out, it looks good. It might not look professional, but it looks good. Baking feels complicated because the end result looks complicated. But you don’t bake a cake by slicing it vertically, you bake it by slicing it horizontally! It has layers of cake alternating with layers of frosting topped with berries. You bake the cake, make the frosting and select the toppings for decoration. And then you layer them.
Find the right way to slice a skill. There is a complicated yet obvious way; there is a simple and right and not so obvious way. The simple way will make your life simple and will make you less confused about how to work.
TL; DR: Less Confusion, More Efficiency
Finally, what makes a cake wonderful isn’t the perfection of each layer but the combination of all the different layers. The base of my cake would have tasted ten times better if I used cake flour. But it would only increase the rating of the entire cake from 8/10 to 9/10. Similarly, a frosting expert might complain I’ve over whipped my cream by 10 seconds, but no one eating the cake will actually bother. Each layer is simple on its own, but harmony between the variety is what provides the beauty, just like an orchestra.
Details don’t matter until they do. As a beginner, you can worry about the details later, just focus on doing the thing according to the instructions.
TL; DR: Good Plan of Action = Results
NOW, let’s come back to the statement I made before – The easiest comparisons are the ones that help the most. The right way to learn something should be complete, simple to do and easy to follow. A comparison that has these qualities will not only feel achievable but also make one feel better. As a step gets bigger and more complex, it’s not the practice that falls apart but the plan, which now will have too many dependencies and bottlenecks. And bottlenecks aren’t great for certainty. Certainty is important not only for a successful plan execution but also for a confident attitude. Using a 2-tier cake analogy, taking 10 hours to perfect a cake and 10 hours to create a perfect second layer but not stacking until the end involves more uncertainty than to make two mediocre 2-tier cakes, stack them within the first 10 hours and then use the rest 10 hours to make a 2-tier cake and then stack it. Not only will this increase the probability of it working, but also increases efficiency through repetition. Given the same time, the second approach is more efficient, hence my statement stands!
TL;DR: Small steps = Better plan of action + simpler To-Do lists + more complete steps = Confidence + Efficiency + Results
A similar thought process is in this article:
For example, imagine that you are really afraid of bridges. Your goal is to be able to drive over the bridge to get to work. Here are some possible steps towards that goal.
- Watch a video of a bridge shaking.
- Walk over the bridge alone.
- Walk over the bridge with a friend.
- Be a passenger while a friend drives over the bridge.
- Drive over the bridge with a friend.
- Drive over the bridge alone.