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A Masterclass a Week. Why would you do that?
In 2020, I plan to learn one new thing per week for the entire year. Here’s why.
The phrase ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ has been thrown my way a few times.
I love learning new things. Like a humming bird flitting from one flower to the next, I’ve tried woodworking, glassblowing, photography, recipe development, food photography, coding, humour writing, improv, filmmaking, jewellery making and more. When people ask me what I do, I say, “I’m a writer, mostly”. But even as a writer, I shift between multiple projects, topics, formats.
Many people see this as a negative thing. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s much quoted golden rule in his book Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master something. But the pressure to focus on just one thing, as well as to constantly produce and progress in a linear fashion makes me freeze, stagnate. I’ve long since stopped trying to fit the traditional model of growth, but this year I’m going all out and completely embracing my own mode.
So the gift of 2020 is an all-access pass to Masterclass — a website where you can take online courses from the world’s experts in different fields, from learning tennis with Serena Williams to fiction with Margaret Atwood. And I plan to take one…
