In a world of self-help gurus and life coaches, we put too much importance on the blueprint and not enough on the work.
One of the inarguable things I’ve learned in my twenty years in
entertainment is that you cannot get out of putting in the time. I used
to believe that with the right instructions, you could hack your way to
the front of the line, believing that simple emulation would be enough.
Take a Masterclass this week, write like Neil Gaiman the next.
There is nothing new under the sun, right? Some wise old Bible king
said that, though he was only partially correct. Science has proven that
matter can neither be created nor destroyed, so sure, what’s here is
here and that’s it, universally speaking.
But if that’s all it takes – just organizing things the right way – then
we should be able to do everything now! In fact, why did it take us so
long in the first place?
Think back to the cavemen, whatever that word means to you. I’m guessing
some hairy dude with a couple of sticks and hunger pangs. Why did it
take him so long to make it from the Great Rift Valley, through Europe,
and across the land bridge into North America? Realistically, he could
have driven. Everything he needed to make a car was already there, from
the raw elements needed to manufacture steel to the fossil fuel needed
for gasoline.
He could have built a factory full of car-building robots and a series
of gas stations along the way. Sure he still needed tools to build
those things, but he could have made the tools too. He just needed to
go through the progression of ideas in his mind, right?
Of course that’s not right.
But why not?
You could argue it’s because the progress we make is in answer to the
needs of our time, and that the caveman didn’t need to go to the moon so
he never tried to. I prefer to believe that some systems involve innate
waiting periods, things like fermentation and muscle memory, and they
are amazing because they prevent everybody from joining the creation process.
Little evolutionary pinchpoints.
Knowing is not enough. We have to chisel away at Gladwell’s 10,000
hours. Simply understanding how muscles break down and rebuild will not
make your pecs bigger. You have to punish them mercilessly and then wait for them to come back bigger and stronger.
You can’t write a book in a day. You can’t get the body you want in a
week. It takes more than a month’s worth of podcasting to build an
audience, and the more quickly we accept that, the more quickly we can
get on our way.
We need more than a blueprint; we need to put in the time.
So yes, study the greats and learn the ins-and-outs, but know that all
the good stuff doesn’t show up until you’re much further down the path.
If we want trivial stuff like time travel or teleportation or those
little meals in a pill like in the 5th Element, (or *gasp* the more vital things like screenplays, novels, or one-woman shows) we better start experimenting today.
Available April 2nd
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