Better

My phone, I think, is trying to torture me. Aside from its propensity to randomly fail to charge overnight just to surprise me in the morning (what do you mean, my battery will run out in 2 hours?), it’s been showing me pictures of where I was this time last year. Tel Aviv, Reykjavik, Berlin… early 2020 was pretty special. I’m grateful that I’ve gotten through the last year at home mostly unscathed (and know I am doing better than so many – trust me, I’m grateful), but the reminders seem spiteful. Fortunately for me, my more recent pictures are all cooking related: I’ve been spending my free time improving my skills.

That brings me to the topic I want to write about today: getting better at something. Despite best efforts, the recipe eludes me even though it’s happening, and that’s a little confusing. I’ve gotten better results, but I am not sure what I am doing differently. I don’t know "how". I am clueless about the "what". I couldn’t tell you the difference in my actions that get me Result A over Result B. To that end, I’ve been thinking hard about how I not just learn but master new skills. 

Let’s start with something simple: pizza.

Due to Covid, I have not been out to many of my favorite spots for a long time, and so there are some food types I’ve been craving. First among them is probably pizza. I’m not talking the New York style pie (as good as it is) but something that’s much more Neopolitan, where the toppings come along for the ride and the crust, thin, crispy and ever so slightly charred on the edges is the star. Solution: make it. 

I was introduced to a great dough recipe (the one by Ken Forkish here) and that became my crust. Even though I’ve cooked pizzas at home for many years from scratch, when I first started working with this dough, it was stressful. It didn’t cooperate. It stuck to the peel. It stuck to my hands. At one point when I got a bit too flamboyant, it stuck to the ceiling, but that’s another story. The pizzas were good (well, the ones that made it to there plate were), but not great. 

Fast forward almost 12 months. My pizza is the best. Period. The dough is silky and stretches out perfectly. The crust is crisp and flavorful, and so easy to work. I can make one with basically minimal effort. Tada. Pizza mastery. Solved.

The problem is, I have no idea what I am doing differently. It’s not the dough recipe because I wrote it down and I follow the quantities to the letter (baking is science, y’all). It’s not the oven as I use the same cooking technique I used from day one. But the results are noticeably better. And this got me thinking about the concept of ‘better’ and how we achieve it.

Aside from bread, one of my other hobbies is music, and it has taught me a lot about how to learn. For a start, it’s a misconception to say ‘practice makes perfect’. Absolutely untrue. It’s much more accurate to say ‘practice makes permanent’, and five minutes of mindful practice focusing on doing everything right is more valuable than hours of noodling in terms of technical improvement. You’re always wearing a groove somewhere – you want that to be in the right place, because undoing a bad habit is tough. 

Because of that, when I try and learn a new skill, I put myself 100% into the moment. I do it with all my concentration, focusing on the smallest things. I think that this mindfulness, this searching for mastery and attention to detail matters and does make a difference. There’s a line from the movie “The Last Samurai” that always comes to my mind. While strolling through Katsumoto’s village Algren notes how the villagers strive to do even simple tasks that form their daily life perfectly:

“They are an intriguing people. From the moment they wake they devote themselves to the perfection of whatever they pursue. I have never seen such discipline.”

That can be as simple as making the perfect pizza, or complicated like being a better programmer or, in my case, CTO. 

Being mindful about what you want to accomplish is, I think, a superpower, and you get the real benefits when you do the small things right – because somehow, they build to something big. For example, with my dough, I now stretch it pretty much the same way each time and I know the right amount of flour to dust it with, and when to switch from stretching the edges to draping it over the back of my hands and finishing it. Does this alone make a difference? Maybe. Is it everything I changed? I sincerely doubt it. 

Mindful means you must sometimes do less to progress more quickly. Working from home, it’s easy to lose attention in a conference call and not be present. Is that wearing a groove in the right place? If it’s with your direct reports, does this make them better and more incentivized to do their jobs or worse? These little things add up, either positively, or negatively. They are more than additive, they are supralinear in terms of return. Better yet, they quickly move from requiring a conscious effort on your part to a subconscious one. They’re now a habit you can build on. 

My pizza making skills may be at their zenith, but I still try to touch every step like it’s critical and there's room for 'better'. Does the time I take the dough out from the fridge make a big difference? Does a bit of cornmeal sprinkled on the peel improve it? (Yes, if you’re wondering, it does). My reward has been many weeks of perfect pizza – when I’m back out there post-Covid, I’m challenging my local spots to beat it! Even though I have few ideas about what I am doing differently I clearly am because the results are night and day from when I started. Those concepts about learning and building skills are ones I need to do better at integrating into my day job because I so dearly want my company to be every single thing it can be. I want my employees and partners to have the same joy in doing every single chore that I do. 

Doing things right takes a different approach to the normal way of doing things. Many companies seem to measure effort by hours on, and I think that’s a huge mistake. Hours spent working can make you better at your job, or worse. Practice makes permanent. Forget that at your peril.