I’m reminded of this possibly apocryphal story about Picasso:
[A] woman who approached Picasso in a restaurant, asked him to scribble something on a napkin, and said she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, “That will be $10,000.”
“But you did that in thirty seconds,” the astonished woman replied.
“No,” Picasso said. “It has taken me forty years to do that.”
To me, this story is about the paradox of mastering a craft. If a person has spent decades mastering an art or a craft, then when an amateur sees them working, it looks like it’s trivial. The amateur thinks, “Anybody could do that. I could do that, no problem. It’s easy.” Of course, it only looks easy because it’s the master doing it.
