It’s Not The Tool

“It’s not the tool. It’s the house you build with it.”

It’s easy to distinguish the master craftsman from the apprentice.

The master craftsman has a skilled mastery of his tools but is not owned by tools. His pride of accomplishment comes from what he builds as a result of the skills and talent he’s acquired from mastering his tools.

The apprentice is only getting acquainted with his tools. His pride is he’s learning something new about his tools and dreaming of one day what he can accomplish once he masters the tools.

What is the difference?

The master craftsman has paid the price of learning his tools, and his focus is on what he can build. The apprentice is just getting comfortable with the tools. It hasn’t yet been determined if he is willing to pay the price to master the tools and build something remarkable.

In his book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field.

So how are you investing your time?