An Artisan’s Tipping Point: The Critical Mass of Crafting

Thoughts By Karboojeh Handmade

Today I entered my craft room and made something I didn’t know I was able to make. It was my first draft, but it looked like I knew what I was doing. I finished the project at hand & it looked too good to be true! That’s when I knew I reached the tipping point of my skill as an artisan.

The Tipping Point - via widro.com

Have you read the book? The Tipping Point (by Malcolm Gladwell)? Well, you should. This book is probably the most cross-cutting, cross-sectoral book you could ever come across. It suits everyone: cooks, artisans, managers, high-up executives, students, mothers, crafters, teachers, pilots… everybody!

I watched the Tipping Point law work for me when I was a musician, and now that I am crafting, I am seeing it happen all over again.

What the tipping point is all about boils down to one thing: When you build up a skill, a project, a campaign, a life together, etc… it starts at the bottom of the hill, and as you go up it becomes harder, and it gets too tiring as you push up your know-how: you read, learn, attend seminars, learn, err. It’s like pushing a huge mass up the mountain… until you reach critical mass; the mass enough to bring your up-hill snowball rolling back down, easily and smoothly. That’s the Tipping Point… when it basically tips.

The darkest hour comes right before the dawn

let’s linger a bit here and talk about what happens before it tips, before the ball starts rolling when you reach critical mass and become a pro. You basically have the hardest time of all times; you put all your frustrations & energy into what you are doing but you feel insufficient – not there yet. And you feel a bit lost, and aimless – “where am I going with this, I don’t see results?” You feel like you’re reading all of these tutorials (books, papers, etc), and you are completely lost as to where to go from here. As an artisan, you spend hours on Pinterest, pinning things that are relevant to you, to your dream project, but you don’t know when you will be the DIYer you want to be!

And then one day you walk into your craft room (office, kitchen, classroom, etc), and you just do things like a pro. “Where did this come from,” you ask. “Last week I sucked at this, now I’m putting this beautiful thing together… effortlessly?”

Yep… that’s the tipping point.

In spirituality, there’s a metaphor that is based on the fact that the darkest hour at night comes right before the first streak of dawn; just right before the sky cracks open with a slight, thin thread of light. That’s the most difficult hour for us as people journeying through life. Right before any dawn on any level: work, love, spiritual growth, psychological maturity… there comes the darkest hour.

But after that very dark place comes the tipping point, the dawn.

P.S. If you’re in a place of uncertainty right now, brace yourself, be patient… the tipping point might be just around the corner.