Prescriptions

“Just tell me what to do, Doc.” Is said often in the clinical setting. What does this imply?

Lets examine this closely. The patient is asking for the instructions from the doctor. They are asking for a prescription, but not just for medications. In this realm, the word prescriptions also represents a how-to guide, a recipe, to-do list. Move your arms this way. Legs this way. Bend your neck that way. Say this, don’t say that. Believe in this and pray this many times a day.

Do prescriptions work? Yes and no.

What I mentioned above are simple prescriptions. These get more complicated.

When one follows a prescription to bake a cake, they do end up baking a cake. It is often the case that the final outcome won’t be anywhere as good was what the author of the recipe made.
The recipe gets written after the fact.

The person writing recipes may understand how ingredients blend together, the physics behind rising the yeast, and the subtleties of adding a pinch of this or that to get the cake just right. The art of making a phenomenal cake entails experience, knowledge, and intuition.

I can memorize Warren Buffet’s book, but I won’t have his experience and intangible knowledge that led to his best stock moves. What he shares in his writing is an overview and his experience as he perceives it. Just reading his work will not replace the gestalt, the deep understanding of the market, and wealth of knowledge that he has accumulated over the years.

By definition, prescriptions are limited. They can work on simple mechanical things. When it comes to making art, when it comes to beating the odds, when it comes to pushing yourself beyond the common, they fall short. This is not their only limitation.

Prescriptions have the natural effect of shifting one’s focus on to them and not towards understanding the matter.

When one follows a prescription or recipe to bake a cake, and their cake is inedible, they look for a different prescription. They go to the website where they got the recipe and message the author who will respond with: “did you follow this to a T because it worked fine for me?” Or they will say, here is an updated recipe. Again, one will get results different from what the author made. There is a common phenomenon of jumping from one prescription to another.

The alternative from jumping between recipes is to understand the physics of heat and how that affects the flour, sugar, and eggs in cookie dough. What components of the dough allow it to rise? What allows it to fluff? How does sugar react to heat? What is the role of liquids in the baking process?

By understanding each part of one’s craft, the prescriptions fall away, and natural art emerges. It’s not about the how, but about the why. When you develop a deep understanding for something, the how becomes a natural step, but distant second step. If you know how each piece of the system works, you don’t need instructions on how to make them work. You will know instinctually not only how to make them work, but also on how to use them to make them something the world has never seen before.