Across cultures
and time, the archetype of the craftsman has represented man’s
ability to create and has been the mark of mature manhood. He is
homo faber – man the creator. Instead of passively
consuming and letting things happen to him, the craftsman fashions
the world to his liking and proactively shapes and influences it.
Ancient philosophers in both the West and the East have used the
craftsman as a symbol of he who contributes to his community and
as an ensign of humility, self-reliance, and calm industry.
When we think
of the archetypal craftsman, images of a bearded man clad in a leather
apron and rolled-up sleeves, toiling away in his workshop producing
beautiful and useful items comes to mind. What’s interesting
is that the ancient Greeks had a much more inclusive idea of the
craftsman than our modern conception. Besides masons, potters, and
carpenters, the ancient Greeks included jobs now considered “knowledge
professions” like doctors, legislators, and administrators
under the craftsman label. Even the work of a father was considered
a craft of sorts that required the same care and attention to detail
as that of the carpenter. Indeed, the ancient Greeks believed that
the values and ethos of craftsmanship were things all should seek
to live by. In so doing, a man could achieve arete, or excellence,
and thus experience eudaimonia, or a flourishing life.
Over time,
the ideal of craftsmanship was cordoned off to just the technical
arts. Physicians and legislators no longer thought of themselves
as craftsmen, but as philosophers and natural scientists who were
more concerned with the theoretical as opposed to the practical.
Such a shift is a shame, for the principles of craftsmanship truly
do apply to every man, whether he makes furniture or crunches numbers.
Below we take a look at how these overarching principles of the
traditional craftsman can apply to all areas of your life, no matter
your profession.
Many of these
principles are things we’ve covered before on the Art of Manliness.
Make sure to explore the links within this article to more fully
understand the concepts held within.
Do Things
Well for the Sake of Doing Them Well
“Make
every product better than it’s ever been done before. Make
the parts you cannot see as well as the parts you can see. Use
only the best materials, even for the most everyday items. Give
the same attention to the smallest detail as you do to the largest.
Design every item you make to last forever.” – Shaker Philosophy
of Furniture Making
Fundamental
to the code of craftsmanship is the desire to do something well
for its own sake. Sure, the craftsman often gets paid for his work,
but it’s not the paycheck that determines how well he does
the job. A true craftsman will work until the job is done and done
well, even if he’s working for free. Philosopher and motorcycle
repairman Matthew B. Crawford shared a story in his book Shop
Class as Soulcraftthat exemplifies the craftsman’s
compulsive fidelity to this ethic.
A guy had brought
an old Magna motorcycle into Crawford’s shop that needed work
on the clutch. Crawford could solve the clutch problem just fine,
but he also noticed that the engine’s oil seal looked “buggered.”
He tried to fix it but didn’t make any headway. Due to the
damage and the nature of the oil seal, replacing it would require
a lot of work and a lot of time. Frustrated, he left his shop for
a smoke. While the smoke filled his lungs, the thought came to him
that:
“The best
business decision would be to forget I’d ever seen the ambiguously
buggered oil seal. With a freshly rebuilt slave cylinder, the
clutch worked fine. Even if my idle speculation about the weeping
oil seal causing the failure of the slave cylinder seal was right,
so what? It would take quite a while for the problem to reappear,
and who knows if this guy would still own the bike by then. If
it is not likely to be his problem, I shouldn’t make it my problem.”
But as he walked
back into the shop, he couldn’t stop thinking about that buggered
oil seal:
“The compulsion
was setting in, and I did little to resist it. I started digging
at the seal, my peripheral vision narrowing. At first I told myself
it was exploratory digging. But the seal was suffering from my
screwdriver, and at some point I had to drop the forensic pretense.
I was going to get that little f***er out.”
Crawford goes
on to explain how he’d often bill his clients fewer hours
than he actually worked on a bike because of his thoroughness or
just his plain curiosity of tinkering with things:
“I feel I
have to meet the standards of efficiency that [an independent
mechanic] set, or at least appear to. So I lie and tell people
a job took ten hours when it might have taken twenty. To compensate,
I also tell them my shop rate is forty dollars per hour, but it
usually works out to more like twenty. I feel like an amateur,
no less now than when I started, but through such devices I hope
to appear like somebody who knows what he is doing, and bills
accordingly.”
Money wasn’t
important to Crawford, just doing the job well for the sake of doing
it well was what mattered.
You can apply
this craftsmanship ethic to more than just tangible objects. Even
if you do more ethereal work, you can do it well for the sake of
doing it well. The reward for doing an exhaustively thorough job
can sometimes be monetary, but it may very well go unnoticed by
one’s customer or boss. The most fulfilling reward of living by
the craftsmanship ethic is the feeling of pride that comes with
knowing you gave a certain job your damndest effort. It’s
the unmatchable satisfaction of seeing one’s inner
integrity displayed in the wholeness and quality of one’s external
labor.
Plan (But
Not Too Much)
With any project,
the craftsman creates twice: first mentally and then physically.
Before he sets chisel to stone or hammer to wood, the craftsman
has already created his work in his mind. In other words, he plans
how to bring out the object from the rough materials and tools before
him.
On the other
hand, while the craftsman understands the importance of planning,
he isn’t over-fastidious about it. Instead of detailed blueprints,
the master craftsman prefers the rough sketch because he knows that
unforeseen problems (or opportunities) can arise once he’s
actually working. The rough sketch, philosopher Richard Sennett
argues in The
Craftsman, provides a “working procedure for preventing
premature closure.” It gives structure, but leaves room for
improvisation and change if needed.
Follow the
example of the craftsman in the way you plan
your life. Envision what your ideal life (and even year, week,
and day) would look like and roughly sketch out how you’re
going to go about making it a reality. Some folks fall into the
trap of trying to plan out every. single. detail. Their over-planning
often leads to frustration when things don’t exactly follow
their ideal blueprint. Even worse, uncompromising attention to a
highly detailed life plan can cause a man to miss out on more rewarding
opportunities that he could not have foreseen ahead of time. When
planning, sketch out a rough plan on the trestle board of your life
and make course adjustments as you actually go about the work of
living.
Measure
Twice, Cut Once
This is one
of the simplest and most memorable maxims of craftsmen, although
it’s not always easy to follow through with in your everyday
life. Suffice it to say that while you should leave room in your
plans for improvisation, when it comes to making decisions that
you can’t take back, make
sure you’ve studied and pondered the choice thoroughly
before you make your “cut.”
Work With
What You Got
The master
craftsman understands that most times he’ll never have the
ideal materials, tools, or environment to work with. Unforeseen
knots are discovered in wood and hidden imperfections in stone are
revealed. Instead of becoming frustrated by such curveballs, the
master craftsman adjusts his plans and works these imperfections
into his creation so that you’d never know they were there.
He can sometimes even work the imperfection into a source of strength
for the piece.
Sometimes a
craftsman doesn’t have the exact tool that he needs, so he
improvises with what he has and learns something new in the process.
As Sennett argues, “Getting better at using tools comes
to us, when the tools challenge us, and this challenge often occurs
just because the tools are not fit-for-purpose. They may not be
good enough or it’s hard to figure out how to use them…However,
we come to use it, the very incompleteness of the tool has taught
us something.”
Just as the
craftsman cannot exactly control what he has to work with, we cannot
control every aspect of our life. We’re all given different
materials and circumstances to work with. Some of us were born with
physical or mental handicaps. Setbacks happen like divorce, accidents,
and job layoffs. Instead of working against this resistance, embrace
it like the craftsman. Instead of seeing these constraints and
contingencies as obstacles, see them as creative opportunities and
incorporate them into your life as unique and interesting pieces
of texture. Remember, some of history’s greatest men turned
what could have been a weakness into a strength.
Cultivate
Patience
A good craftsman
has the patience to stay with frustrating work, even when it takes
longer than he originally thought. He avoids frustration by living
by the following maxim: when something takes longer than you expect,
stop fighting it and embrace it.
Much of our
frustrations in modern life could be avoided if we would just develop
this zen-like patience of the craftsman. Us moderns have a perverse
expectation that things should happen NOW. We want emails answered
immediately and we even expect success to come right away. Mark
Zuckerberg is not your average success story, so stop trying to
be like him. The reality is that things almost always take longer
than expected, especially those things that are good and noble.
So instead of fighting it, embrace it as the calm craftsman does.
Life will become instantly more enjoyable and less stressful once
you cultivate this virtue of patience.