Many years ago when I was just out of the Navy, I spent a summer in Colorado working in construction. I met a carpenter named Jimmy, and although he wasn’t that much older than I was, he had an understanding of working with wood I had never seen – and haven’t since. Jimmy had been doing this so long that his work had become second nature to him. He was not an expert, but he was a craftsman.
I think it was then that I decided I wanted to be the same – no matter what I did in life. I didn’t want to be a “knowledge worker.” I wanted to be a “knowledge craftsman” and learn to work with people and relationships in the same way Jimmy worked with wood.
What I wanted to do would not come easy.
I did not understand then the concept of what writer Malcolm Gladwell describes in his popular book Outliers as the “10,000-Hour Rule.”  It takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field.
Gladwell found that along with talent there needed to be the ability to stick with something long enough to become good at it.  Talent was not enough.
This reminds me of an experience with my father when we were driving in rural Colorado, and he began searching for a phone booth to make what seemed to be an important call. He found a phone and was gone less than five minutes. I questioned the seriousness of such a short phone call.
“That five-minute call took 20 years to make. I started working on that call before you were born.”
My father was right. What seemed effortless to me had taken him decades to build the trust and competence preceding that conversation. The call was the result of his making a long-term investment in his craft.
When I was younger, I defined a good bit of the value of my work by how much energy I expended, and that is fine. That kind of unlimited energy is necessary to accumulate the 10,000 hours needed to hone a craft.
But the norm for my 30s, 40s and 50s has changed in my 60s. It is not that I have less to accomplish, but I have slowly realized that my work has become easier. What used to take me six weeks to achieve I can often do now with a note or a five-minute phone call.
When I first noticed this a few years ago, it unsettled me because I had always defined doing good work as starting the day early and staying late. I mentioned this uneasy feeling to a friend of mine in the oil and gas business, and he gave me a metaphor that was perfect:
“In our business we love the thrill of hitting paydirt when all that gas, sand, water and oil blows out of the well. There is nothing like it, but we have to harness the energy to make the well more productive. For that, we put what we call a ‘Christmas tree’ on the well to direct the energy. Without that set of valves there would be nothing left to use.”
If I could say one thing to my young friends starting off it would be what I learned from Jimmy and my father. Work that is satisfying takes time and years of practice.  Work that matters is the result of preparation and concentration. The best work is almost unnaturally hard for many years. And the best time to start is now.
When you come to visit at the office, you will see a large, heavy “Christmas tree” valve from an oil well sitting next to my chair. It reminds me that not only do I no longer need to measure myself by how hard I am working, but there is actually a time in life to regulate the flow and know that all the raw energy of my earlier years was not wasted.  It was only natural and the way a lifetime of good work begins.