A two-week course at the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building made me realize that I might learn about something beyond boats by building them. Our instructor, Joe Greenley, was a superb craftsman — his cedar-strip kayaks are seagoing sculptures — but it wasn’t his skill with tools that I absorbed. It was the way his mind flowed directly from problem to solution without allowing any emotional muck — irritation, frustration, anger — in between.
Mr. Greenley was never perturbed about a mistake; he simply set about finding the most efficient fix. He understood intuitively that surges of negative emotion not only interfere with problem-solving; they also get built into the object you’re working on.
by Lawrence W. Cheek, a writer living on Whidbey Island, Wash.
