Enough to Get the Job Done

I have been following cooking videos to learn new dishes recently. A lot them are overwhelming and not easy for a beginner at all. I watch them and immediately think it is just a lot of work and I wouldn’t be able to do it.

One day I was watching a video of a dish I prepare regularly that I learned from my mom. Half way through the video, I felt that the tutorial was making the dish unnecessarily complex. The version I learned from my mom is extremely simple and yet tastes great.

Thinking about it, my mom could have also taught me the complex way to prepare that dish. But she knew that I would have a hard time understanding it as a beginner. I would have completely given up.

The simple recipe got the job done and once I did it enough times, it was easy for me to follow the complex recipe.

I think this applies to everything we learn. There are tutorials or end products we see and it might feel too hard to follow. A better way to learn is to learn the basics and then just enough to get the job done. The next step from there to becoming an expert doesn’t look as hard anymore.