Nudging the needle
Three stories about mastery and how expertise is earned and not cheaply bought.
Mastery of pitching, presenting, or public speaking is no overnight affair. Despite the allure of shortcuts, improvement demands patient, unglamorous work—the steady accumulation of skill and resilience over decades. Expertise is not bought but earned in the quiet, daily “nudging of the needle” towards something better than it is now.
Story 1 - Don's Lawn
You used to live next door to Don and June. June was a spiritualist, and Don was a man in love with his lawns.
You would watch Don roll his cigarettes as he looked at his perfectly manicured grass. He would nod occasionally, content that the lawn was indeed perfect. Sometimes, he would frown, disappear and return with tweezers to pluck something rogue from the sacred blades of grass.
You were twelve years old and fascinated by Don's lawn.
It's impossible to describe just how perfect it was—bright green, lush, with not a weed to be seen, and with those wonderful mowing lines, it was the envy of the neighbourhood.
One summer, you decided that Mum and Dad's lawn needed to be perfect, too. How hard could it be, after all?
Don would watch you battle with your lawn. He was generous with advice and encouragement. He would tell you about watering, feeding and weeding. He would talk about the seasons, types of grass, when to seed, top soils and drainage.
He told you to be patient.
But you wanted a finished lawn – a lawn as perfect as Dons. And you wanted it immediately. You had the tools, the ingredients and a lawn to work with, but no matter what you did, your lawn wouldn't look like Dons.
He had a headstart on you, a thirty-year headstart, and a passion for grass, something you lost interest in as soon as the summer holidays were over.
Story 2 - The frustrated GenXer
You can remember looking at the world through the eyes of a twenty-two-year-old. Brimming with confidence and frustrated with how unwilling the universe was to accept your brilliance, you would gaze angrily at the achievements of your older, more successful peers and managers. You were ready, and you were good enough; no, you were better, but what was going wrong? Why did Klaus get to present your creative idea to the board of directors? Why did they prefer Sandra and her ideas to you? Why weren't you being taken seriously?
You were asking the wrong questions, of course. What have they done that makes them better than you? How have they done it? What's their process? What can you copy, steal, imitate, or learn from them? Yes, with hindsight, these are better questions.
What will it take me to be better than me? The best question of all.
Story 3 - The Hollywood shortcut you'd never get
You cried yourself to sleep at night with frustration. Why couldn't you wake up and be able to speak fluent German? As if by magic. Why all the work– the learning of grammar, vocabulary, culture and dialects? Why must it be so hard?
Six years later, fluent now in German, you would watch The Matrix and giggle to yourself as Neo declares after ten solid hours of having martial arts uploaded into his Matrix brain, "I know Kung Fu". A Hollywood shortcut you'd never get. You still giggle when you watch that scene now.
Becoming a keynote speaker
Sometimes, you're approached by people who want to become a finished keynote speaker. I want to be a TED speaker and earn big bucks with my talk! They might tell you. Who knows, maybe it's part of their annual development plan – a new challenge for the year?
When this happens, you remember one of the three stories above.
They're looking for a Matrix upload, a shortcut to fix their problems immediately. They're looking for answers to the wrong questions. Like you, they're looking for the perfect lawn when, instead, they should be looking to become what it takes to be the person with the perfect lawn. Maybe they've seen you perform. They want your lawn. Like Don, you show them how to cultivate what they want.
Nudging the needle.
It's taken you thirty-four years to become as good as you are at presenting, and thirty-one of those years have been spent learning German. You're still learning, and it never stops.
You now see your ability as the sum of a billion incremental steps or the nudging of the needle of expertise. The sum total of creative experience from the 1st of October 1990 until the 29th of October 2024 (the date this post was published - it continues, of course). That's 12.440 days of tiny experiments, mistakes, disasters, triumphs, daydreaming, action, producing, writing, presenting, winning, and losing. An Experience Point for every day lived, and a Level gained for every trip around the Sun. You've not always been conscious of this, but, goodness gracious, you certainly are now.
That's why, when people want the magic Speakery pill, you tell them to put in the work—to patiently and incrementally nudge the needle towards something better than they are now.
I hope you enjoyed that. I’m currently working on a new keynote about mastery called “Nudging the Needle” and will share a few ideas from the talk in the Newsletter from time to time.
Thank you so very much for reading.
Marcus.