Do you know the feeling when you know an album so well that you always anticipate the next bar of a song and when the song ends, you can already hear the first beats of the next song playing in your head? The best albums are the ones, where it might take quite a while to get to know the music that well, but even when you seem to know every line and every note, you are still surprised and delighted by new facets every time you listen to it. What a joy!
Real satisfaction comes from going deep into something. From listening to music over and over again. From being deeply immersed in reading. From exploring a topic that interests us not only on the surface by reading a summary, but digging deep into the rabbit hole until we unearth the truly fascinating details. From understanding how something works at its core.
That’s also when we create our best work: When we know something so well that we are able to not only apply our knowledge and use our skills intuitively without much thinking, but also know when to playfully and consciously improvise or vary to create something new. Mastery comes from going deep into something.
Far too often, we only scratch the surface. We try to take shortcuts to understanding and mastery. Take any topic you like: Writing, playing an instrument, drawing, learning a language, astrophysics, medicine, cooking, interaction design, typography, and, of course, HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. Try to master it by only scratching the surface, and you will utterly fail. It’s easy to dismiss it as being overly complicated or “broken” then. Yet, in the end, you just didn’t go deep enough. There are no shortcuts. There is no silver bullet. Go deep.
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This is the 26th post of my 100 days of writing series. You can find a list of all posts here.
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