Novice to Professional
If we subscribe to the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, there are five stages to learning and mastering any given skill or profession: 1. Novice2. Advanced beginner3. Competent4. Proficient5. Expert Novices follow rules which have been established for them. When the nuclear reactor starts flashing its "meltdown warning light", for example, they quickly reach for the manual and look for instructions. As they progress up the chain to become experts, intuition gradually supplants obedience. Expertise...
My Own Worst Critic
In writing entries on here, there have been times when I spent 30 minutes writing, refining, and editing a single article that I thought would offer my readers insight, and would get them talking to me. Often, when I do that, I hear nothing. Other times, I'm up at 2 in the morning, sleep deprived, and I'll pound out an entry in a few minutes based on a fleeting thought. And surprisingly, there have been...
Entitled
I have a friend who has worked at Starbucks for quite a few years now. He tells me that the people who come in and order the coffee every morning often have egos that swallowed Cleveland, and treat him less than equitably. It's possible that my friend has worked there a little bit too long, but he does have a point. Any marketing or branding expert in the country (hell, the world) will tell you...
Thereby Hangs A Rock...
If you attend a craft fair in Southern California, sooner or later, you'll come across someone who's selling rocks. But, these are no ordinary rocks. They're healing crystals. Drinkers should grab a peridot for their livers, people with the flu just need some turquoise, and rose quartz is the new age equivalent of Viagra. (Funny, I've never gotten a spam email about rose quartz.) They're not just selling gemstones...they're selling small slices of mythology. Polished...
The Boring Orchestras of Yester-year
Orchestras have been experiencing a rapid decline in their attendance in the last few decades. I guess people just don't want to spend their evenings in a stuffy concert hall bored out of their minds. (Who would have thought?) Classical music fans, on the other hand, are quite upset about this. They are the kinds of people who claim that young people these days are stupider than ever, just because, given the choice, they choose...
Plunge Instead of Trot
The hour of New Year's resolutions is almost upon us. There's a trend that happens every year: at the beginning of January, gym memberships and attendance spike up. By February first, the number of people at the gym has fallen back to its normal count. We just can't keep it up for very long. We resolve to do things, but don't follow through for very long. This belies a simple truth: people want to create,...
Crowdsourcing Recordings
Me, if I had to support only one cause, it would be literacy. One of my favorite organizations is Reading for the Blind and Dylexic. You can sign up to volunteer to read a textbook onto a recording, which is then made available to all members. For those of us without a teaching certificate, it's probably the quickest and easiest way of opening up the avenues of learning to other people in this world. The...
Behold
Create while you're still filled with wonder. If you wait until you're an expert or have otherwise proven yourself, it'll be too late.
Doing It Yourself
I ran around town about six months ago looking for green, unroasted coffee beans. I was a little surprised by how few coffee baristas knew that coffee beans start out green and end up brown only after they've been roasted in large drums. (A couple of these same baristas also shared the story of the origins of Kopi Luwak with me, as a possible explanation for how coffee ends up brown.) I was looking for...
The Stakes Have Never Been Lower...
...for the small. What I mean by that: it used to be very, very expensive and costly to follow through on bad ideas. Now, you don't need to be sure you have a great idea before you start testing it out. Now, you can do a lot for little monetary cost and see if any mud sticks to the wall. Musical idea? Don't write an album and try to get a record company to distribute...