Building an Interest

My father had a very simple policy: all problems were just puzzles to be solved – all puzzles had a solution. The trick was to understand which puzzle pieces you had, and which ones you needed.

One year when I was a teenager, my family’s vacation project was to build a multilevel deck. I told my dad that I wanted to learn to nail the boards together.

Deconstructing the task

My dad was a ‘one strike-one nail’ kind of guy, meaning that he could set the nail with just one strike of the hammer. It looked like a cool skill – yet was clearly harder than it looked. But dad didn’t let me give up, even though I couldn’t go as fast (or as successfully) as my older brothers. Instead, we took a break, and he began deconstructing the process of hammering, and explaining what went into doing the job.

We talked about the necessary physics and force; the accuracy required to drive the nail straight; and whether it mattered if it took one stroke or six. Changing hammers made a difference, and he showed me how to find the right hammer for the job I was doing. When the nail bent, he showed me how to unbend it – and what happened if you just drove it in crooked.

Acquiring wisdom

Dad set the nails at varying heights so I could come in behind him and finish driving the nail. We practiced and built understanding as the work went along until, finally, there was just a hole for me to put the nail in and drive it myself. No “that’s my girl” or “good job” – we just moved on to the next piece, and the next skill. While he told stories, I learned about the process of acquiring wisdom.

Over the years that followed whenever someone remarked on the deck – or about my dad’s good fortune in having sons – he made a point of highlighting the two deck levels he built with his daughter.