Daily Dose 37: Apprentice

Years ago, a young man “made himself” by being apprenticed to a skilled craftsman. Over many years he developed deftness with both the tools and the skill habits of the craft, starting at the bottom and bit by bit adding to his store of skill and knowledge by doing whatever the craftsman needed done.

Now a worthy craftsman knew how to bring the apprentice along step by step, explaining and showing him how to use the tools, and how to perfect the skills of the craft, from the basics through the trade secrets of success: how to stoke the fire with different woods and ores to build a hotter flame, how much time to temper the silver or the glass, how to tell when the bark was ready for carving. Subtle, expert skills became accomplished over the years, until the apprentice’s eyes, hands, and work habits became as accomplished as those of the craftsman.

Young ladies often did not leave the house for their apprenticeship. Every home was its own skill building center for family survival: making bread, soap, candles, preserving seed for the next spring, making thread and yarn before making clothing. Because these skills were crucial for survival, children realized their contributions were vital for the family’s well-being, even when doing “simple” jobs.

Hidden Lessons Taught with Skills

Coming along “for free” during all these skill lessons for both young men and women were time and process lessons: the best time to do a task, the sequence of steps to follow, how long various projects should take, and what could be successfully combined.

In the modern world, very few of us were reared with conscious attention to developing practical skills, let alone time skills. At best, the untaught lessons were there if we somehow caught them. Far too often,we have been reared with such a jumble of inefficient examples it is hard as an adult to know where to begin to change.

Pictures for the Mind: Craftsman and the Apprentice

Being all alone in my home, I found pictures for my mind, were as helpful as many of the time tools and as motivating as having a private coach. One of these pictures is that of the craftsman and an apprentice.

Thinking Like the Craftsman

Thinking like the craftsman inspired me to look at practical tasks that had to be done (how do you write a report, how do you thoroughly clean a room, how do you organize a teaching day) with a teaching eye as well as with a doing eye:

• breaking the tasks down to component parts
• analyzing the sequences needed for an expertly finished product
• figuring out how tasks could be scheduled or combined to be done both efficiently and effectively

Thinking Like an Apprentice

Thinking like the apprentice had its own benefits:

• it helped keep me accountable to continue practicing an area, over and over again even if no one else saw it
• it made me more conscious of how well I was using the “craftsman’s” time,
• it heightened my senses to look for what made a quality job whether making a bed, preparing a workshop, reviewing for a test, or thinking through a budget.

In short, it became my all-purpose motivation to improve what was still lacking.

We certainly do not have a human master time craftsman with us in our homes to show us the ropes. In fact, human masters seem to clamor for our time to go to their priorities, pushing our priorities into dark corners of neglect. (While another whole conversation in itself, the short solution is discerning God’s priorities. These will “conveniently” embrace all of the appropriate “their” priorities with all of the appropriate “my” priorities into God’s personal challenge package for you).

Even without a human time teacher we can “apprentice” ourselves to learn the tools, the principles behind the tools, and the subtleties of the skills needed to become time craftsmen ourselves. In God’s economy, two other generations of apprentices (younger adults and children) are waiting to to learn those skills almost as soon as we can master them.