Winging It

The strawberries taste like strawberries. The snozberries taste like snozberries. This is the Music Makers podcast where I read things out loud to you and then offer my unqualified opinions on them. Everyone is totally just winging it all the time by Oliver Burkeman. Amid the acrimony surrounding the firing of Jill Abramson, executive editor of the New York Times, there's one point of near universal consensus.

The whole thing was remarkably poorly handled. Whatever your views of the people involved, it seemed hard to believe. How could an institution as august and smoothly competent as the times have stumbled so badly? There were echoes of that same incredulity in Britain this week when Ed Miliband, the labor leader, revealed in a car crash of a regional radio interview that he didn't know who he was campaigning for there. Whether you love him, hate him, or hadn't heard of him before reading this blog post, you'd be forgiven for shaking your head.

Surely, the head of the most popular party in the world's 6th largest economy has someone to brief him on such basics. We're similarly shocked when authority figures who are supposed to know what they are doing make it plain that they don't. President Obama's health care launch being probably the most serious recent example. We shouldn't really be shocked, though, because all these stories illustrate one of the most fundamental yet still underappreciated truths of human existence, which is this. Everyone is totally just winging it all the time.

Institutions from national newspapers to governments and political parties invest an enormous amount of money and effort in denying this truth. The facades they maintain are crucial to their authority and thus to their legitimacy and continued survival. We need them to appear ultra competent too because we derive much psychological security from the belief that somewhere, in the highest echelons of society, there are some near infallible adults in charge. In fact, though, everyone is totally just winging it. For further evidence, consult this popular Reddit thread.

Grown ups have read it. What is the most embarrassing thing that you should be able to do but can't? The short version is that nobody has much of a clue what they're doing. Here are some of the responses. Basic arithmetic.

Really embarrassing at work when I panic and struggle to add up too small numbers. I'm nearly 30 years old, and I don't know how to tie my shoes in the normal fashion. Instead, I can only do it bunny ears style. Swim, ride a bike, drive a car. I'm really bad at telling time on an analog clock.

I know how it works, and I can get there, but I just can't glance at the clock and know the time. I've often thought of my experience of adulthood thus far as one of incrementally discovering that there's no institution or walk of life in which everybody isn't just winging it. Growing up, I assumed that the newspaper on the breakfast table must be assembled by people who truly knew what they were doing, then I got a job at a newspaper. Unconsciously, I transferred my assumptions of competence to, among others, people who worked in government. Then I got to know a few people who did and who'd admit after a pint or two that their jobs involved staggering from crisis to crisis, concocting credible sounding policies in cars on route to press conferences.

And even then, I found myself assuming, self hatingly, that this might be explained by a certain bumbling Britishness, the perverse pride we sometimes take in shambling mediocrity. Then I started working in America, where, it turns out, everyone is totally just winging it. This realization is alarming at first, but it's ultimately deeply reassuring. As the UK organization Action For Happiness likes to point out, one of the biggest causes of misery is the way we chronically compare our insides with other people's outsides. We're all miniature New York Times' or White Houses energetically projecting an image of calm proficiency, while inside we're improvising in a mad panic.

Yet we forget, especially in the era of carefully curated Facebook profiles, that everyone else is doing the same thing. The only difference is that they think it's you who's truly competent. I spent a while trying to think of an ingenious conclusion to this point so as to give the appearance that I'd been confidently advancing toward it from the start. But on this occasion more than any other, it would seem appropriate to admit that I failed. In closing, everyone is totally just winging it.

This episode is going out the 1st Monday of 2016. Hopefully, you're still sticking with some of your resolutions. Hopefully, in the first three days, they haven't all disappeared. And as you're starting the new year, hopefully, you're trying new things. You're picking up new hobbies.

You're trying to learn new skills or new crafts, or maybe you're just trying to quit old things. Whichever one it is, if you've actually been trying, you're probably starting to feel like, I have exactly no idea what I'm doing. And the good news is neither does anyone else. Everybody is just winging it all the time. You're not crazy.

You're not the only one that's trying to figure stuff out on the fly. Everybody's doing it. I keep thinking that at some point, I'm gonna hit record and feel like, hey. I'm a really, really good podcaster, but that still hasn't happened yet. I still feel like I'm winging it every time I show up.

I'll listen to other podcasts and think, man, those guys are real professional. And then I'll come back here in my spare bedroom and set up and think, man, this is really amateur hour back here. But I know for a fact that other people that make podcasts feel the exact same way. I've seen a picture of one of my favorite podcasters under a blanket in his living room recording because he don't have a proper sound studio. He's just winging it.

Just doing the best he can. And this only really gets us into trouble when you feel like everyone else is not winging it. You know that you're winging it, but you feel like everyone else is a professional. Everyone else knows exactly what they're doing except for you. You get into trouble when you start comparing yourself because you're comparing someone else's highlight reel to your own life, and you know all about your own life.

I only release the final versions of these podcasts. If you could hear how many times I mess up, how many times I start over, how many times I use my hands for emphasis and hit the mic, if you could hear any of those things, whatever illusions you had about me not winging it, though those illusions would be shattered. But I don't release all of that stuff. I edit all of that stuff out. And when people post stuff on Facebook, they're choosing very carefully what to post on Facebook.

When they post stuff on Instagram, they're choosing very carefully what to post on Instagram. It's just like the article said, don't compare your insides to everyone else's outsides. Don't compare someone's public image with what you know about yourself. That's not really a fair comparison. Whatever your new pursuit is in 2016, whatever you're trying to start doing, whatever skill you're trying to acquire, whatever business you're trying to start, if you feel like you're just winging it, that's okay.

Don't let that discourage you. Books are written by people who were winging it. Businesses were started by people who were winging it. Podcasts are recorded by people who are currently winging it. All around the world, there are parents who are doing a great job at parenting, and they are totally just winging it.

And whatever it is you're trying to do has been done before by people who were just winging it. Don't let the influence of imaginary peers who have everything figured out stop you from trying. There is no one that has it all figured out. Those people are made up in your head. Don't let those made up people stop you.

In 1933, Bertrand Russell wrote an essay titled, The Triumph of Stupidity. I'm gonna close with a quote from that. The fundamental cause of trouble in the modern world is that the stupid are confident, while the intelligent are full of doubt. The Musicmakers is released every Monday at 9 AM CST. You can find show notes online at musicmakers dotfm, or please send me an email and tell me what you think.

Aaron@musicmakers.fm. I would love to hear from you.