and why practice beats theory
Apparently in the early days of Wikipedia, its founder Jimmy Wales, would explain to people that his pioneering idea didn’t work in theory, it only worked in practice.
A mantra that I think is very helpful in a lot of contexts today, I was in a book bookshop this morning, looking at a display of business books and feeling suddenly rather overwhelmed by the amount of instant success that they appeared to offer.
But so often these books and so many of the courses we go on offer us the distilled essence of learning, as if that’s going to accelerate our progress.
But I think it often leaves us behind because practice is different from theory.
Something that I’m leaning into running a workshop series with my friend Shawn Callahan, called Immersed in Story, where we’re going very long on practice of telling and listening for stories and very short on telling people pre-digested ideas of how to do this well.
We want to create an environment where we go as sort of fellow explorers making surprising discoveries together, from and with each other.
And I think this idea of practice is starting to play a bigger and bigger role in the work that I do.
If you’re interested in immersed in story, drop me a message.
I’ll be happy to tell you more about it.
Photo by Jaredd Craig on Unsplash
