It's not a bad analogy for the way amazing feats work (get it, feats?). You start with something small and unsure, with a definite goal in mind, and you work towards it through persistence, determination, and patience (and a little impatience at times). It's amazing that every person you see walking around was once a teetering, incapable little tot. I know I went straight from crawling to running... into things. It took some time to sort it all out.
What's really cool is that if you pursue the analogy, all of the great leaders and thinkers and entrepreneurs in the world once moved with complete ineptitude. It's only through a whole bunch of trial and error and encouragement from others that anybody was or is able to succeed. As we grow, external motivation is replaced with self-motivation, and parents are replaced with teachers and mentors, but the same basic principle persist throughout a person's life cycle.
I taught university English for a couple of years, and I have to say that nothing was more frustrating than when students had forgotten the baby-step principle. For whatever reason, a lot of people as they grow forget about pursuing a vision. They forget about learning things by small increments. And they forget about the fact that total, abject uncertainty can be the parent of accomplishment. Nothing in uncertainty necessarily foretells disaster. It seemed like half my time was spent convincing students that they didn't already know everything there was to know, and that it wasn't a bad thing. The other half was spent trying to tech them how to use a goddamned comma, but that's another post...
This summer I've written most of a novel, and I think I was able to do it through the simple procedures for learning that I had as a child. I started out with a very sketchy set of ideas and then slowly organized them into a more coherent picture of what I wanted to create. Then I wrote it one small step at a time. I knew roughly what I wanted it to look like, and I proceeded to create it with disdain for every blunder and mishap along the way. I hesitate to use the word "natural" when it comes to describing this process, but I think that we are born with a pretty good idea of how to do great things. The big challenge is remembering that we can still do it when we're older.
What's really cool is that if you pursue the analogy, all of the great leaders and thinkers and entrepreneurs in the world once moved with complete ineptitude. It's only through a whole bunch of trial and error and encouragement from others that anybody was or is able to succeed. As we grow, external motivation is replaced with self-motivation, and parents are replaced with teachers and mentors, but the same basic principle persist throughout a person's life cycle.
I taught university English for a couple of years, and I have to say that nothing was more frustrating than when students had forgotten the baby-step principle. For whatever reason, a lot of people as they grow forget about pursuing a vision. They forget about learning things by small increments. And they forget about the fact that total, abject uncertainty can be the parent of accomplishment. Nothing in uncertainty necessarily foretells disaster. It seemed like half my time was spent convincing students that they didn't already know everything there was to know, and that it wasn't a bad thing. The other half was spent trying to tech them how to use a goddamned comma, but that's another post...
This summer I've written most of a novel, and I think I was able to do it through the simple procedures for learning that I had as a child. I started out with a very sketchy set of ideas and then slowly organized them into a more coherent picture of what I wanted to create. Then I wrote it one small step at a time. I knew roughly what I wanted it to look like, and I proceeded to create it with disdain for every blunder and mishap along the way. I hesitate to use the word "natural" when it comes to describing this process, but I think that we are born with a pretty good idea of how to do great things. The big challenge is remembering that we can still do it when we're older.
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