Harold Schonberg, former music critic for The New York Times wrote about a European conductor who wasn't very skilled, who created fabulous music because he kept his orchestra in rehearsal for each concert for a full year.
You can acquire some proficiency at almost anything if you put in enough time. Ongoing trial and error expands the collection of mini experiences you assemble for new situations.
A few years ago I worked with a team of Scandinavian business leaders in the U.S. We visited a high school where a man asked, "Why aren't these students learning?" In the community where he lives, most teens apprentice to learn the skills they'll need to earn a living for the rest of their lives. Learning models vary widely around the world. The one most U.S. schools and businesses have adopted is usually talk-based, instead of hands on or based on direct experience.
Jump-start your appreciation and context for a task, if it's not too physically dangerous, by doing the work before learning all about it. When you get a sense of what it feels like to be in someone else's shoes you begin to establish the mental furniture you'll need when you begin to learn about the task.
Irish poet, David Whyte, tells a story of being a marine biologist, knowing in his heart he was a poet. A friend, who was a monk, visited David and they talked about his inner poet. The monk suggested each day David do one thing as a writer. He suggested David write a poem, write a letter mentioning he wrote a poem the day before, research the poetry market, read something on poetry, and do this for a year. At the end of the year, "You'll be a poet," his friend said. And David was.
To do anything new you need to pick the right combination of muscles for the task. They need to come on and go off at the right time, and they need to have the exact right intensity. That requires living through the initial uncomfortable moments and finding your pace.
I lived in East Africa during a year in college with a family who spoke no English. I needed to find the right words (or accompanying hand gestures) to convey meaning about everything from food portions and sleeping arrangements to washing my clothes. I also learned how to cook amazing meals because the women I lived with prepared giant feasts for marriage ceremonies in the local community. I had never prepared food for five hundred people; however I seemed to soak up everything I needed to know when given a large bowl, mounds of ingredients, and basic instructions.
By diving in, you feel the emotions around you, pick up pheromones from other people involved, and generally sense a situation more accurately than you could by observing from a distance. Although poolside antics are considered irresponsible, the "sink or swim" metaphor contains some truth.
Charles Garfield, who worked for years with the astronauts at NASA, watched them rehearse everything in simulators. Later he studied peak performers, people who were experts in what they did. It struck him that they also used mental simulations, imagery to help them succeed. In the mind's eye they walked through every step of the complex processes and visualized both what there were doing and how they would do it.
Mental rehearsal establishes the pathways, associations, and connections stimulated by the real-life experience and triggers the same whole-body circuitry. When you then take action in the real world, you have a sense you've done this before, and can do it again.
When it comes to readiness, each of us is like a hockey player as he skates down the ice, He's thinking, "Who is coming at me from the left, the right, behind me, in front of me?" These are the sorts of questions and messages that help us get ready to enter a foreign market, write a novel, ask for a promotion, master Ruby on Rails, or learn to be a good parent. You can prepare forever. To be ready, begin.
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