Colm O'Regan: Are we losing good old-fashioned expertise?

Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Pic: Denis Minihane.

The problem with New Year’s resolutions is the word ‘new’. 

Usually, it refers to the newness of the year but I’ve been duped by the lure of the portfolio career into thinking it must mean: Do A New Thing. 

It sounds great, doesn’t it? Flitting between different jobs. Never a dull moment. 

Never getting stale, Constantly acquiring new skills.

I fantasise that one day someone will call me a polymath. 

Essentially, I just want to be Leonardo Da Vinci, travelling from one unscrupulous fabulously wealthy Italian patron to another producing great work, never letting the moss grow under my feet or if it does grow, I’m using it to make a new pigment for painting moss. Because I’m thinking of getting into apothecary.

But that was Leonardo da Vinci, he was a genius. And he wasn’t distracted by the internet. And in fact, Leonardo left an awful lot of frustrated patrons behind him as there were a lot of paintings that he didn’t finish because he was constantly moving onto new things. 

I’ve no doubt Leonardo got plenty of emails — or letters as they used to call them — which said: “Hey Leonardo how’s that painting going… Leonardo! Are you sketching another flying machine? Can you please finish my painting first?”

Most of us are not Leonardo. I know, not even me! But my episodic career so far has given me bad habits. I could get two emails one after the other — one saying “Hey Colm, you don’t know me but I think you’re great — do you want to work on this new thing?”

And another saying, “Hey Colm can you do the thing you normally do every week and send it at the usual time? K, Thanks. Bye.”

I know which one I like reading more and so another episode is added to the career.

It’s necessary of course. The career of a freelancer is not unlike a Super Mario-style computer game, where you jump onto a series of moving platforms as they swing towards you because the one you’re on could end any second, but still I feel something is lost. Namely — craftsmanship.

One of the things I like watching when I’m supposed to be working is an old documentary series from the golden era of Irish Television called Hands. It’s from the 1970s. 

Each episode would last about 10 minutes and it would consist of a craftsman just going about his or her day. 

A voiceover would gently guide us through the stages as they carved a table leg or built a boat. It was methodical, slow, but expert. 

At no point did the craftsman talk about leveraging his skills and moving into the content delivery space. He just built another boat.

It looked like they had been doing that for a while, and would continue to do so when the cameras stopped rolling. Now obviously things have changed. 

In the time I’ve taken to tell you about this, you could have imported 10,000 table legs that are being unloaded at the port off a container that came from Macau. 

So we don’t need a craftsman taking ages unless it’s an expensive table leg. I mean we really do, but I don’t think I’m going to change the economic system in one column. 

Although it’s definitely something I could get into... actually… no, Colm, FOCUS!

I wonder with this constant “no such thing as a job for life” and “workplace agility”, are we losing the flow of good old-fashioned expertise, just consuming skills but they’re not really sticking? Good enough to do the job, but is there anything lasting?

So this year, I’m resolving to have a look at what I’m already doing and do it properly. And not get distracted. 

Apart from starting a campaign to bring back Hands.