A speaker explores Enduring Craftsmanship, one of twelve wisdom archetypes, using wood splitting as an example of how hands-on work restores mental focus. The sensory details—the crack, the ping, the smell of fresh splits—create a full-body brain break after hours of spreadsheet work, and the same principle applies to any tactile craft like gardening or needlepoint.
Chapters
The next one is what I call Enduring Craftsmanship. Enduring Craftsmanship is one of my 12 Wisdom Archetypes, but Enduring Craftsmanship is like that craft that you have. Maybe you call it a hobby, but I think about it as craftsmanship. A craft is more than just a hobby in my mind. I mean, it is, but a hobby is something that that grabs your brain and forces you to put it in a different place. And I'm going to share with you a very odd craft that I have, and I'm going to share with you how I look at that as, as how deep I get into this and how it's a brain break for me. So one of the things that I love to do— oh, this is so weird. It's so— I'm not embarrassed about this, but it's so weird to share this with you. But one of my crafts is splitting wood. So I'm going to share with you. So I brought in visual aids for this. So here's a piece of wood. This is a piece of wood and I split this piece of wood. So here's the piece of wood and eventually I'm going to split this piece of wood so that it looks like this. Now that sounds like what? That's a craft? So You know, don't you just take a big heavy maul that looks kind of like this? So this is a maul. And so don't you just slam that thing in the top of that and make it crack? But here's what happens with me with this. This is why this is a brain break for me, because if I take this piece of wood and, you know, you look at this piece of wood, and then when I set it up on that, on that piece of other piece of wood that I'm going to put it on, The first thing I do is I look at this piece of wood. Now take a look at that. See that crack along the top? So, you know, when I set this up and I'm going to hit it with this maul, I set it up and I've got to hit that right in line with that crack because that's where there's a crack in the wood already. And if I can hit that just dead on, this thing's just going to spring apart. And so that's going to be awesome. And then also, if you notice, if I set this up, it wasn't cut straight. So when I set this up, it's gonna, it's gonna be curved. It's gonna be on a curve. So then it's not only that I have to hit it, but I can't hit it straight on. I have to hit it in the angle with the wood. So as I'm lifting that maul up and I'm coming down, I have to make sure that I hit it on that angle right down. So I'm looking at all of this. This is the craft of it. And then when you hit a split, a piece of wood, and you hit it just right, there's this ping, this sensorial ping, the sound that just goes like, and you can just hear it. And then you can just see the pieces of wood just fly apart. And there's a magic in that. There's a kinetic energy in that. And so, and then when the wood hits the ground, especially dry wood like this, it makes a sound of clattering, you know, on the ground, you know. And so that clattering sound is also part of this craftsmanship. And then you pick it up and you put it in a nice pile, and there's a sense of accomplishment. So look, I'm not trying to convince you that, you know, splitting wood is the thing you should do. But what I am encouraging you to do is to take the brain break of a craft that you have. It could be needlepoint, it could be gardening, it could be anything. But really create the sensorial experience of that brain break, of that hobby, that craft, and really engage it with your ears. Hear what's going on. Smell what's going on. Oh, the smell of freshly split wood. Mmm, smells so good. So what's that sensorial experience of that craft? That creates a brain break. And so I love to, when I'm working hard in my office and my brain's like steaming, I got stuff going, I've looked at spreadsheets for the last 3 hours, Sometimes I go outside and I just like pick up this big maul and I just go like, let's just split some wood. And I know that that might sound crazy to you guys, but what is your enduring craftsmanship, your hobby for brain breaking? Okay, moving on.
