By now everyone knows about the fire that engulfed the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. It is a building that’s almost a thousand years old. A lot of its structure was made from wood. The fire was massive. And yet the church survived.
My hometown also has a gothic cathedral that was built in the 14th century, aptly named “The black church”. This because it has survived a similar fire, and despite it, is still standing.
This is a testament to the incredible craftsmanship that European masons were able to achieve even back then. They manage to organize themselves to create these amazing buildings without any modern planning tools.
A great contributor to their success was the apprenticeship system that was present back then. If you wanted to learn any trade in medieval times you had to study for a lot of years under a master of a craft. You were not able to branch out on your own until you produced a work of good enough quality to appease your teacher.
Most people in modern times skip this phase. They go through the standard educational system, which focuses on book learning, and then enter the work world without any proper preparation, and either get overwhelmed, or settle into some menial job. This leaves most people unfulfilled.
It is now our task to construct our own apprenticeship. At the start of our careers we should go through a period of 5-10 years in which our primary focus is learning, not earning. There should be no shortcuts.
Look for challenging tasks that engage your sense of meaning and challenge you enough to force you to progress, but not so much that you get overwhelmed.
Thanks for reading!
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