Lancelot Schaubert — What was the impetus behind this book, John Vorhaus?

John Vorhaus — In my professional life I have two classes of clients. One is, broadly speaking, writers and other creative types. The other is, unexpectedly, people trying to get into to business schools like HBS and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. I noted that both of these constituencies had common concerns, common blocks and barriers, and common fears. So I set out to write a book that would expand the definition of “practice” to encompass all of these endeavors plus, basically, anything anyone might call practice — anything from art to enterprise and every place in between. Out of that intention came THE BOOK OF PRACTICE: How to do Better What You Want to do Well.

Lancelot Schaubert — Is all practice created equal?

John Vorhaus — Not sure what you mean by that. Some forms of practice are more effective than others, in the sense that they more effectively build craft or build expertise. But the “act of practice” is absolute, in that one is investing time, energy and effort into one’s growth. In the sense that all practice creates some sort of growth, all practice can be said to be equal. But in the sense that some people are “better at practice” than they used to be, their current version of practice is not equal even to their former version. But let’s be clear: Practice doesn’t mean “rote repetition of things I don’t like doing but feel I must do.” Rather, practice means applying awareness and acceptance to ones passion and purpose for the pure sake of, yeah, “doing better what you want to do well.”

Lancelot Schaubert — How does this overlap with good habits?

John Vorhaus — I’m not sure what you mean by habits. Habits to me are conscious or unconscious activities that we routinely pursue in our lives. I have a “habit” of ultimate frisbee (a positive addiction) and a “habit” of sneaking doughnuts (a negative addiction)(at least for me). Habit relates to practice in this sense: “I am routinely pursuing this activity because I perceive it as a positive addiction in service of my skill-building or craft-building or profession-building goals.” So I guess we can speak of the “habits of good practice.” What do you think are the top habits of good practice?

LS — Well I thinking practice as in praxis — those things you do regularly. And habits and in whether you “have” a good quality or a bad one. Virtue ethics, in other words, and those things surrounding it (Power of Habit, etc). So we train like we fight and we fight like we train. 

I guess I’m wondering if there’s a way to practice goodness. Or truth. Or beauty. And how we parse whether or not we’re improving? 

What are the metrics for improvement, as we practice?

John Vorhaus — Here’s how I practiced goodness today: I was on the WGA/SAG picket line where, among other allies, we find numerous “preWGA” and “preSAG” want-to-be writers and actors. They’re young. They want to be where, well, I am, and I’m very familiar with where they are. I admire and value their intent: they are, in a very real sense, supporting or defending their future. So I try to serve them. I explore where they are on their path, where they want to go next, and how they might get there. People find it helpful (it’s so refreshing to encounter ANYONE who will speak to the truth of human experience). Today I talked a lot about how our interpersonal space is defined as “other-awareness colored by self-consciousness.” One metric for improvement is a scale of self-consciousness. Consider it a dial and seek to dial it down. You don’t need to enumerate or calibrate, just seek to be “less self-conscious” about work or selling or output or whatever and then note when you achieve (and then re-achieve, and then re-re-achieve) that goal.

LS — That’s good, yes. And what about seeking the truth? The intellectual life? How do we know that we’re practicing growing in wisdom?

John Vorhaus — There’s a lot of talk these days about the Dunning Kruger Effect, which postulates that a lack of real knowledge will cause one to overestimate their competency. And the Buddhists tell us that “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” So I would guess that truth-seeking and intellectual growth happen best within a mindset of radical humility in the face of the Great Unknown. From this perspective, one’s awareness that “I am growing in wisdom” will be accompanied by a sense of “then again, I’m like a fish trying to know the ocean, so, really, what do I know?” I’m not bothered by the depth and breadth of my own ignorance because I don’t assign a negative value judgment to that. I’m never saying “wisdom is good, ignorance is bad.” I may know these things, but they’re beside the point. My only “mission” in this sense is to keep closing the gap between what I don’t know and what I do know — with full realization that the gap is infinitely wide, so my progress can only ever be thought of as “relative, not absolute.”

LS — I’m curious, though, what the practice of this looks like?

John Vorhaus — The specific practice of growing in wisdom? Well, you have all these tools — self-inspection, self-reflection, information gathering, acceptance — and these tools all serve to grow your self-awareness. Let’s say you read a transformational book. You are aware of yourself being in transformation. You reflect on the experience of being transformed. You storehouse your discoveries. So the next time you encounter transformation, you’re that much better equipped to have a fruitful experience, because you have that previous experience, and the lessons you learned from it, to draw upon. Basically it’s a positive feedback loop, where you take motion toward growth, learn from that motion and that growth, and feed your discoveries back into further motion toward further growth.

LS — What about growing in beauty? What does a beatific — or generative — artistic practice look like? What good habits can we form in that way and know whether we’re moving towards the Beautiful or away?

John Vorhaus — In my book A WHITE BELT IN ART, I note that artistic capability is made up of three things: Eye, Hand, Voice. Eye is what you recognize as beautiful. Hand is your capacity for executing what your eye sees. Voice is the clarity of your philosophical or artistic intention. I imagine that these three qualities exist on a “scale of one to ten.” We all start out somewhere on each scale, and we all grow our practice along all three lines all the time. For myself, I started out with high values for Voice (since I’d been a writer and knew what that looked like). Eye and Hand lagged far behind (because I was brand new in art). Over time I have seen all three values grow. How? Simply through practice. Not even practice toward the intent to improve, just raw, every day, “do it, then do it again, then do it again” practice. What else is there? You can study technique or read philosophy to deepen your understanding, but nothing substitutes for active engagement with your art. Fortunately, it’s very self-reinforcing: the more time you put into practice, the better you get at it and the easier it comes. Speaking of time, here is my latest work of art, called “Haul Clock.” You can decide for yourself if it’s moving toward or away from the Beautiful.

LS — That’s wonderful.

Sometimes when people talk about practical, they mean, “What’s immediately practicable” or “what can be implemented right now” — in that sense, they merely mean what’s easy. In that sense, what’s practical about this book?

John Vorhaus — There are lots of “follow these steps to achieve these outcomes” kind of things, plus many opportunities to self-inspect and instantly grow one’s self-awareness through the simple strategy of making some lists. Practice is easy. If you think it’s not, it’s all in your head (but then again, isn’t everything?)

LS — You want to list any of them?

John Vorhaus — I’ve got a better idea (better for me, anyway 🙂 ) I’ve just sent you a review copy of the book (.pdf). I know that you are a seasoned professional but I propose that you explore it through the “beginner’s lens” and ask yourself, “If I were a young striver, just starting out, which bits would I find useful?” List the first 2 or 3 that you stumble across and we’ll continue the discussion from there.

LS — I love the Chesterton quote:

“St. Francis  his courage was running, in the sense of rushing. With all his gentleness, there was originally something of impatience in his impetuosity. The psychological truth about it illustrates very well the modern muddle about the word “practical.” If we mean by what is practical what is most immediately practicable, we merely mean what is easiest. In that sense St. Francis was very impractical, and his ultimate aims were very unworldly. Bit if we mean by practicality a preference for prompt effort and energy over doubt or delay, he was very practical indeed. Some might call him a madman, but he was the very reverse of a dreamer. Nobody would be likely to call him a man of business; but he was very emphatically a man of action. In some of his early experiments he was rather too much of a man of action; he acted too soon and was too practical to be prudent. But at every turn of his extraordinary career we shall find him flinging himself around corners in the most unexpected fashion, as when he flew through the streets after the beggar.”

What about on the other end: is there something that values prompt effort and energy over doubt and play? The mad flinging oneself around a corner? A radical call to action right here, right now, an immediate change that we might practice what we preach?

Honestly, glancing through this, it doesn’t look like a task list. I’m curious what you’re referring to.

John Vorhaus — Yeah, no task lists. I don’t know what to tell you. It feels like you want the book to be something it’s not. Maybe it’s more a book you use to build a relationship with (thus to build a better relationship with itself) than it is a how-to. In fact, as I think about it, all of my how-to books up till now have been “how to do” books. This one is a “how to be” book. It needs a different frame of reference.

LS — So no how-to, no practical guide. It’s more of a resting in your position as practitioner.

So in a way, it sounds like a healthier WAR OF ART or something?

John Vorhaus — Maybe. People have called it “The Artists’ Way – Lite” which I buy. Sometimes it feels to me like the I Ching — like you can just open it at random and be informed by whatever catches your eye. Anyway, it’s short and easy to read, which is always a plus in today’s device-driven, ADD-addled world. Even I, an avid reader, am often distracted by everything else that clamors for my attention: games, Tik-Tok, etc.

LS — That makes sense sure. What sorts of people do you have in mind for this?

John Vorhaus — Anyone in practice, with the loosest definition around that word, stretching all the way from art to enterprise and everywhere in between. Anyone who wants to do better by themselves and better with others will probably draw value from The Book of Practice.

LS — What sort of anecdotes and stories do you use? Is there anyone with an artistic practice to whose life you appeal?

John Vorhaus — I use fictional examples of “young strivers” in certain situations just to demonstrate how my concepts will perform in “fake real world situations.” However, I did make the choice to keep myself out of the discussion. This is very much a “you” book, not an “I” book.

LS — Gotcha. What do you hope the person the most unlikely to read this would take away from it?

John Vorhaus — Great question. I would hope that someone who thinks of themselves as “the last person in the world to be in practice of anything” can discover that with awareness and acceptance of one’s passion and purpose, a fruitful practice of absolutely anything is possible.” And on that note, I propose to wrap up this discussion and dive into the weekend. -jv