{"id":803,"date":"2015-10-08T16:40:18","date_gmt":"2015-10-08T23:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/?p=803"},"modified":"2015-10-08T22:46:24","modified_gmt":"2015-10-09T05:46:24","slug":"the-over-competency-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/the-over-competency-trap\/","title":{"rendered":"The Over-Competency Trap"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are at least two kinds of mastery in any art you care to name. The most recognized form is virtuosity, because it\u2019s easy to quantify. You can follow a musical score to check if a performer is playing all the right notes and in the right time. The second is having a honed intuition, which is harder to capture. Knowing what notes to play is simpler than knowing how to play them. Its simpler than knowing what notes not to play. It\u2019s safer than flaunting the score.<\/p>\n

In ages past, virtuosity was elevated because it represented the heights human effort could obtain. Now that machines can perform with absolute precision, a human doing the same is considered robotic. You can train your muscle memory to play Flight of the Bumblebee<\/em> in double time, or follow the Save the Cat<\/em> formula to write a screenplay that hits all the right story beats, and still make people yawn. Virtuosity alone is not enough to be engaging. People now look for the human element, which allows for mistakes. In fact, you don\u2019t even need to be that good to be great, much to the chagrin of anyone who\u2019s mastered their craft and been ignored.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve come to think of virtuosity as another plateau on Mastery Mountain<\/a>, one near the peak. The over-competency trap is so dangerous because it\u2019s almost indistinguishable from greatness. After all, if you\u2019ve mastered the perfect formula to create art that wows the public and critics alike and gives you a steady paycheck, why change at all? It\u2019s not like figuring out the formula to write an A+ undergrad essay, only to move into the real world and have people tell you your writing is undergrad garbage and you only got those grades because the curve was so low. When the whole world tells you you\u2019re amazing, it\u2019s easier to think you have nowhere left to go.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yet, the truly great artist keeps striving, otherwise they get buried on a plateau \u2013 under an avalanche the people who\u2019ve kept going have caused.<\/p>\n

So how do you avoid getting stuck up there?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Ask yourself why.<\/strong> Why this story? Why this medium? What do you want to say? Your motivation might just be to get good at something. It\u2019s nice to say you\u2019re good at something, but it\u2019s hard to get anyone but your mother to care if the only message your art sends is, \u201cLook at me!\u201d Art is communication \u2013 Tolstoy defined it as an emotional transfer. The purpose of art is to make people feel. The reasons why are as numerous as artists, but that goal remains prime.<\/li>\n
  2. Observe and keep gathering new influences.<\/strong> It\u2019s not enough to figure out a great formula and stick to it. That\u2019s the fastest route to cliche and stagnation. Great art draws from life experience and observing the world outside that art. For example, you can always tell if a storyteller pays attention to the way kids actually behave, because someone who doesn\u2019t draws from the same cloying cliches everyone else uses. Also, the best artists don\u2019t just look up to the greats, they pay attention to what the next generation is up to as well.<\/li>\n
  3. Vary the tone in your work.<\/strong> There\u2019s a type of artist who considers their work so serious they never lighten up for a moment, drubbing the audience with the drama bat until they go numb. I watched a movie recently where the soundtrack shoved constant tension in my ears, steamrolling over obvious moments of levity, making the whole movie so exhausting I stopped giving a shit. The director in question lacks the intuition about when to let up, as well as faith in his audience to feel. It\u2019s like he had a film school formula that told him what kind of music makes the audience feel X, and instead of sprinkling it like a spice, slathered it over everything.<\/li>\n
  4. Constantly re-evaluate the rules.<\/strong> As the old saw goes: every time you write a novel, you have to learn how to write that<\/em> novel. If you see someone else break a rule you hold dear, and it somehow works, make a note of it and let it go. No one likes a pedant. Constraints are only valuable so long as you can move within them. If you find yourself in a straight-jacket, it\u2019s time to bust a strap or two. Sentence fragments are not all evil. They\u2019re sometimes exactly what you need.<\/li>\n
  5. Creativity is inventive by nature, yet so many people forget.<\/strong> One time an agonizing search for the right word led me to discover there wasn\u2019t one. A friend told me to make one up and I was shocked. You can do that? Damned right you can. Shakespeare invented hundreds of new words, but even an idiot like Homer Simpson can add to the lexicon, as shown when \u201cdoh\u201d was added to the Oxford Dictionary. Leonardo DaVinci nearly destroyed The Last Supper<\/em> with his pigment experimentation, but I\u2019m pretty sure if you asked him he\u2019d say, \u201cScrew that one painting surviving the centuries. I\u2019m devising new techniques for the future.\u201d<\/li>\n
  6. If you stop taking risks, boredom follows.<\/strong> The over-competent master is someone who sticks to a successful formula and keeps hammering it out. Their output stays constant at a fairly high level. Commendable, right? Only so long as people don\u2019t get bored, and that includes the artist. On the whole, the great artist\u2019s record is far more spotty. It can range all over the spectrum, from absolutely terrible to so amazing it crashes through the roof of people\u2019s expectations. Great work sets the bar. Competent work stays safely below it. If your formula is so successful you don\u2019t dare deviate from it, you might as well make a mint selling the formula (or lease your IP for hire) and retire. Even Michael Bay has gotten sick of making Mattel Toy Nostalgia Extravaganza movies, but he\u2019s stuck doing them because he\u2019s buried under a huge pile of money.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You can see the risk principle in action with certain bands, like Pink Floyd. You had David Gilmore and Roger Waters \u2013 one conservative artist holding the wild one in check, and the wild one constantly pushing the others\u2019 boundaries. Within that dynamic lies great art (or a total explosion). When you have both in the same person, you get pure magic (or a total implosion). Each had their own trajectory after the band split up. Gilmore\u2019s Floyd was conventional stadium rock and Waters stuff was so weird it only has a small cult following. But the best example comes from when the two of them settled their legal issues enough to allow each to perform their own personal Pink Floyd concerts. David Gilmore was adamant about keeping the songs as close to the original recording as he could. Roger Waters, on the other hand, was adamant about improvising every time. Both philosophies have their own set of fans. I watched my dad shift from the first kind to the second as he grew bored with hearing the same song over and over again. As much as he liked the originals, he grew more respect for Waters, treating music like a living thing rather than a butterfly pinned to a disc long ago.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    There are at least two kinds of mastery in any art you care to name. The most recognized form is virtuosity, because it\u2019s easy to quantify. You can follow a musical score to check if a performer is playing all the right notes and in the right time. The second is having a honed intuition, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,11,19],"tags":[20,30,25],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-design","category-writing","tag-advice","tag-criticism","tag-practice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":808,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions\/808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}