Setting Expectations as a Craftsman
Every January I do the same thing. I look my calendar, look through my shop, and (sometimes) quietly assume I’m about to become the kind of person who wakes up early, drinks one sensible coffee, and produces award winning work on a perfectly reasonable timeline.
By the second week I’m standing over a joint that looks like it was fitted by a raccoon with a file, wondering if I should take up something more aligned with my natural gifts, like watching paint dry.
I don’t believe people talk about this enough. The work isn’t hard only because the work is technical. The work is hard because your (my) expectations get out ahead of your hands, and the gap feels DEEPLY personal.
So, I propose the following: if you want to stay in this long enough to get good, you (me too) need to practice expectation management.
The hidden source of frustration
People think the early struggle is proof they lack talent. More often, it’s proof they started with a outrageous expectations.
My personal fantasy timeline has looked like this:
Week 1: Buy tools.
Week 2: Learn the basics.
Week 3: Build something impressive.
Week 4: Develop a signature style and a loyal audience.
Week 5: Start teaching in a candle-lit studio with soft music, while your work sells itself.
If that’s our internal schedule, it is no wonder why a normal mistake feels like a crisis. The frustration isn’t coming from the mistake though; it’s coming from the expectation that you “should be past this by now.”
The shop doesn’t care what week you’re on.
The cruelty of craft: your eye develops faster than your hands
One of the most discouraging realities is that taste improves early. We can see what good work looks like long before you can consistently produce it. We are capable of noticing problems we don’t yet have the control to prevent. We spot the tear-out. We see the uneven line. We feel the slop in the fit. We have use left-handed anger when thinking of throwing a chisel.
This is normal, but it feels awful. You think you are getting worse when you are actually getting more aware.
A lot of people quit right here because they interpret awareness as failure.
Learning has stages, and the first one is clumsy
Something I recall vividly in the beginning was the fact I did not like my work, because it looked like my work. That distain remained for quite some time until I came across something that helped change my mindset. Your early work, is supposed to look like… your early work.
Now that I teach regularly, I can notice that skill development tends to move through a predictable progression.
Early on you’re thinking hard about everything. Your attention is split, you’re slow., and maybe a little inconsistent. You’re doing the work in your head before you can do it in your body. That phase is mentally expensive and emotionally annoying.
Then, gradually, things start to link together. The movements become less awkward. You begin to recognize patterns and make fewer dramatic errors. You may not notice that, but hey - that’s progress even if it doesn’t feel exciting!
When later, the basics become automatic, your attention finally frees up. You can focus on proportion, feel, and refinement. Thats that kind of thing that make it really obvious that your hands have caught up to your eyes. So please remember, if you’re in the clumsy stage, you’re not behind. You’re exactly where the work starts.
The real trade: standard versus timeline
I hope, from the bottom of my heart everyone absorbs this: you get to pick your standard. You also, (shock and horror) get to pick your timeline. However, you do not get to pick both, at least not at the beginning.
If you demand high standards and a short timeline, something breaks. In my experience that has manifested as my sanity. A close second would be your patience. Sometimes it’s your confidence. Most often it’s your willingness to keep going.
If you keep the standard, the timeline stretches. That’s the deal, period, full stop.
If I may introduce a better approach; keep the standard, and extend the timeline on purpose. It’s honest, and people like that about craftsman.
Patience is trained behaviour
Patience gets talked about like a personality trait, like you either have it or you don’t. I am here to tell you with full confidence it is a learned behaviour. Do with that information as you will!
How can you notice this elusive behaviour in your process? Patience looks like a set of repeatable behaviours:
Doing the setup properly,
Checking square even though you want to “just cut it”,
Taking one more pass when you could probably force it,
Stopping when you feel yourself getting sloppy, and;
It looks like returning the next day and continuing, rather than trying to win the argument with the wood at 11:30 p.m.
I say this as someone who has absolutely tried to win that argument. The wood always wins. It wins quietly, and then you find out later when the piece tells on you.
If you want patience, you train the behaviours that create it. Start small with the goal of making it automatic.
Pick one or two “non-negotiables” that you do every time. Here are two very easy things you could implement. never skip a a dry fit before glueing and another could be sharpening before you blame the tool.
Why the early stage feels personal
In the early stages, mistakes feel like personal attacks on your character. That’s partly because you’re investing effort, and effort creates attachment. It’s also because your identity gets tangled with the outcome.
You cut a joint poorly and your brain tries to turn it into a story. Check the box if this sounds familiar:
“I’m not cut out for this.”
“I should know better than this”
“I’m behind.”
“Everyone else is better.”
“I swear to god I’m going to sell all of my tools”
If any of those resonate with you - you might be a tad hard on yourself.
A healthy interpretation is: you attempted a difficult thing, you found the edge of your current skill, and now you have something specific to refine.
That’s a win! Do NOT overlook that. You may have forgotten a time not long past where you did’t even know the basics of what your currently beating yourself up over.
A better expectation for the year
If you’re starting, or restarting, here’s a healthier expectation for the year:
Let’s expect to move slower than we want. Let’s expect our taste to improve faster than our hands. Let’s expect the early stage to feel messy. Begrudgingly, let’s expect confidence to arrive late. Finally, let us remember to reward calm repetition.
If you can accept that without spiralling, you’re already ahead. If you figure it out before I do, please, do a guy a favour and hit me up.
Craft has had a strange way of helping me grow up. Unfortunately, it demands purpose, patience and precision. Not in a poetic way, but in a very practical way that shows up in your habits.
If you can work on that as well, the work will meet you halfway, faithfully.
The next time you walk out of the shop frustrated some days, take it as a sign you cared enough to notice. That awareness is part of the process.
Stay with it,
Matt
