We all seem to know how every day matters.
However, what causes people to plateau suddently and how does every day activity help in avoiding that messy situation? Dig deeper into the very average concept of every day learning and you’ll see it’s anything but mundane.
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When's the best time to get a natural looking photo of a person?
If you've ever tried taking a photo of a person or a group, you usually end up with the same cheesy look. That's because people put on a fake smile just for the camera. They're all smiling but you can tell it's a posed photo.
However, just after you've clicked the photo, they tend to relax. If you had kept clicking, there's a pretty good chance you'd have got a more natural looking picture.
Okay, so now that you've read this information, will you implement it?
If you're like most people, the chances of implementing this idea is really bleak. Part of the reason why we forget is because we're not using the raw power of “everyday”.
We all know and have been told repeatedly that “everyday matters” but we chalk it down to “practice”, when there are other things in play. Let's look at why everyday activities outperform something you'd do every now and then. Let's look at three broad areas:
Every day matters because:
1- Book concepts come alive.
2- It helps you make progressive mistakes.
3- Get to harness serendipity.
1) Book Concepts Come Alive
Have you ever seen a Jeep with 50 people on it?
While in Rajasthan, India, we encountered transport systems quite different from those in other parts of the world. Every day, people living up in the hills need to get down into the valley to work on the farms.
Since there is no public transportation, private vans are the primary means of transport. It's commonplace to see two dozen people sitting in the jeep and another two dozen on top.
I somehow had to take a few photos but had no idea how to do so.
Imagine my surprise when I pointed the camera at the jeep moving at high speed, and it came to a complete halt. The driver had decided that it was fine for me to take as many pictures as I needed.
A second earlier, the passengers on the jeep were absorbed in their world. One second later, they were posing for me. I got my picture, and they all smiled and laughed. The van sped off.
That's when I realised I'd made a critical mistake.
Instead of continuing to click the images, I put the camera down. I'd got a lovely set of posed photos but nothing that captured the natural behaviour of the people on the van.
I was a bit annoyed with myself because I'd read not once but many times about how a photographer should keep clicking because the moment after the pose is when you often get a natural look.
Book concepts don't easily translate to action.
When we started this article, I mentioned how it's essential to take a picture once people have stopped posing. Then, the Jeep story continued to underline an identical idea.
The idea of “taking pictures once people have stopped posing”. However, reading something in a book doesn't get most of us to take action.
It's only when you make the mistake repeatedly that the idea sear into your memory.
When you and I do something every day, we have the chance to make the same mistake repeatedly. When we stumble, we realise we're making an error and recall what we've read.
However, without somehow doing the activity every day, you simply don't get the chance to make the mistake often enough.
If you want to eliminate errors in your life, you have to make them repeatedly.
Almost anyone will boast about being the “world champion” in making mistakes. However, the frequency of the errors is crucial. In the movie Groundhog Day, the character relives the same day repeatedly. However, because he's aware of the mistake that's about to occur, he avoids it altogether.
If you're a writer and want to avoid making the same mistakes, write daily.
If you're learning a language like French and making mistakes with a specific portion, go at it daily. If you're a dancer and not quite into it, watching YouTube videos may not help you as much as you'd believe.
It's easy to believe the concept of “practise, practise, practise.”
However, this isn't about “practice.” It's about taking a concept you've read about, watched, or listened to and putting it into your everyday work. You make the mistake repeatedly until one day, the mistake disappears completely. This is the first reason why “every day” matters.
2) It helps you make progressive mistakes.
In America, 97% of the population seems to have ketchup in their homes. Yet, ketchup isn't American at all.
The word originates from a Hokkien Chinese word ,kê-tsiap, and was originally a sauce derived from fermented fish. The recipes seemed to change once the British encountered the sauce, but they added ingredients such as mushrooms, walnuts, oysters, and even anchovies.
The ketchup was thin and dark then and lacked the ingredients we know so well. All ketchup had no tomato.
It's not like a tomato ketchup solved the problem, either. When tomato growers tried to preserve tomato pulp, the sauce was often contaminated with bacteria, spores, yeast and mould. They'd add sodium benzoate to counter this spoilage, which is as nasty as it sounds.
It's only when a Pittsburgh man named Henry. J. Heinz decided to remove the benzoate and work on another formula containing vinegar—did we get the early version of today's tomato ketchup?
In other words, the ketchup we enjoy today was the result of a lot of evolution. As terrible as it sounds, evolution needs to make a lot of mistakes. Working on something on an everyday basis is a bit like inventing ketchup. You have to make many errors and rectify them as you go along.
Once again, people will tell you that they make mistakes.
The reality is they don't make enough of them. Most people make a few hundred mistakes a year when they should be dealing with thousands. Daily work allows you to make these mistakes progressively.
Take the example of my watercolour work.
In 2010, I went to a watercolour class because I was truly horrid with watercolours. Until that point, I'd never used paints from tubes and depended on a terrible plastic palette.
I had no idea how to use paper or avoid the big cauliflowers that form when you add too much water to the paper. However, after two or three classes, I thought I'd made excellent progress.
I went up to the teacher, proudly showing him my work.
He looked at it and made a suggestion: Is there something you can do daily? He asked me. I thought about it and decided I could draw and paint a very basic diary in watercolour.
At this point, 5,582 have elapsed. Yes, I've been drawing almost every day in watercolour, and while I have more “modest” 4000+ paintings, I see them as more than 4000 progressive mistakes.
I know they're mistakes because I can tell you what I'd fix.
I can pick up a book from 2014 and tell you what was off with those drawings. I could just as easily open a page from 2018 and describe how I'd change the thickness of paint, font, or even how I laid out the page. When creating the image, I was doing the best I could. However, I was making progressive mistakes.
Every day doesn't literally mean every single day.
There are gaps along the way. There have been times when I've not done, or wanted to do a thing for two months at a stretch. However, I eventually crawl back and get moving to make more mistakes and fix them as I move ahead.
The same principle applies to my language learning or the courses I create. The courses seemed terrific back in 2005. Yet, two decades later, we're still finding mistakes in the content, the delivery, how to teach, etc. You may not do a course, write, or draw every single day, but there must be a semblance of an ongoing journey.
Making progressive mistakes lets you develop speed.
Talent is really “science at high speed”. You think the person is talented when someone does something systematically at a mind-boggling pace.
Yet, the factor that slows us down is the number of mistakes we make. You will never achieve the desired speed without making and reducing progressive mistakes.
Mistake-making is crucial.
You must make progressive mistakes when making an omelette, a painting or tomato ketchup. As you can tell, you can only progress when you make a lot of them.
Hence, if you run into that person who tells you they're making mistakes “all the time”, you need to remind them to ramp up the errors so they can fix most of them as they go along.
Every day matters. Plus, there's a third reason: serendipity.
3) Serendipity
In the past, I'd remove my fancy camera about thrice a year. Usually only when going on a trip or for some special occasion. Then, I got some advice that improved my photography forever. I was told, “Take your camera wherever you go.”
I take my camera to weddings, the cafe, and even dinner.
Some people who haven't seen me in a while only have to see the camera to know it's me. However, this anecdote isn't about me or even about photography. Instead, it's about creating more surface area by doing something almost daily. The more you show, the more chances you have of something happening.
If you do something infrequently, it better turn out right.
On the other hand, if you do something every day, you tend to experiment. Maybe you sketch every day and decide to try a new pen or a different style.
Also, doing something frequently helps you notice patterns. You see what works and what doesn't. Doing something regularly doesn't guarantee magic. However, it does create a doorway.
However, there's a chance you do a lot. How can you fit it into every day?
Remember when you first learned how to drive? You had to focus on everything to keep the car on the road. Even starting up was a challenge in itself. Yet, today, you and I probably think nothing of driving. You might not drive for months, and then you're right into it.
This ability to do things at high speed directly results from doing something every day until you get quick at it. Once you get quick, you develop more skills and can do the same task easily. It's often a lot faster.
At first, a skill takes you ages. Then, as you get faster, you can add more into the mix until you get to the point where you no longer have to make excuses. You can do half a dozen—if not a dozen activities without breaking into a sweat.
That's how you can fit a lot of activities into any day. It won't happen today or tomorrow. But before you know it, 5,582 will pass. And you'll be stunningly good at many skills. Or not. It all depends on whether you have an everyday plan in place.
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