Egg decorated without following instructions...
Last night we sat down at a friend’s dinner table with 6 kids to decorate Easter eggs.
Fancy Ukranian Easter eggs (also called Pysanky eggs).
To make them you take raw eggs and decorate them with wax and then dip them into colored Easter egg dye. By dipping into a sequence of colors, you can create fantastic patterns.
5 of the kids and I had never done this before. There’s quite a bit of technique to master. You use a tool called a kistka, which is a tiny brass funnel attached to a dowel, to drip beeswax onto the egg. To melt the wax you hold the kistka in a candle flame. It’s tricky to get the wax flowing just right. I had a lot of trouble getting a steady flow. I felt a bit like Charlie Brown trying to write with a fountain pen.
There’s also the matter of the dyes. Certain dyes work well before and after other dyes. Other combinations simply turn your whole egg black.
So what’s the point of all this?
Of the eight of us decorating eggs, only on person actually read and followed the instructions.
She copied a pattern from the instructions, and dipped the eggs in different colors in the exact right order.
Now, she’s not a particularly artistic person, certainly not an egg decorating expert. But she blew the rest of us out of the water.
Eggs decorated by following directions!
This is the power of following step by step instructions.
And you don’t have to be an expert to get “expert level” results. That is, as long as we define expert level results as being an order of magnitude better than your immediate competitors. Of course there are thousands of people who are true pysanky experts. A novice following instructions can’t hope to compete.
But still. Her eggs rock because she followed instructions.
This is a tactic I’ve followed in my own business, whenever I can.
It’s one thing to know the general ideas behind something, but another to have step by step instructions that get you from where you are to where you need to be.
It’s also why I try hard to document things as I do them, to make my own instruction sheets for my future forgetful self.
I’ve been working these past few months on a few different sets of “detailed instructions” for a couple of important areas for your small business or non-profit.
One relates to brick and mortar businesses. It’s about getting more people onto your newsletter list when they’re making a purchase.
The other is about how you can put up a simple mobile-friendly website for all those millions of people who are doing most of their online research on their mobile phones.
I’ll let you know as soon as they’re available.
SEO help from the ScribeSEO plugin. Check it out for yourself.
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Joe,
I can’t wait to get both sets of instructions! And… do you think that you can also share the instructions for decorating those super-cute Easter eggs?
Joe,
I can’t wait to get both sets of instructions! And… do you think that you can also share the instructions for decorating those super-cute Easter eggs?
If you Google “pysanky kits” you should be able to find tools and instructions. I think you can get a basic set for $10 – $20. The dyes are special dyes – not for eating. I don’t know what results you’d get if you used regular Easter egg dyes.
So the dye clings to the wax, and that’s how you get all the ornate looks? Is that the mechanism for how it works?
The wax blocks the dye. So first you lay down what you want to be white. Then you dip in yellow. Then you put wax on anything you want to keep yellow. Then you dip in some other color & repeat. (This is where I stopped following directions!). As long as you go from light to dark, that white area is still covered, and so is the yellow, etc. At the end you melt off the wax.
One of my friends sent the following in response to this post:
“The first thing I would do is go to that woman and buy her lunch. What is her story? did she grow up in a family that demanded perfection? Was her fierce determination to delay her joy (compared to the rest of you) based on fear? or experience? Does she know herself, and the world, well enough to know she will very likely do a better job if she takes the time to know how to use the tools? What is her secret? IS IT a secret? Why with all the brainpower and experience of the rest of you (you being Exhibit A) didn’t YOU read the instructions and follow them? (yes, you read enough to ensure some kind of success, but what are we chasing here?) Are we chasing enthusiastic participation OR a precision end product? Can’t we have both?
“Lest you think I should not be the first one to cast stones, I do the same thing. I’m self-teaching myself Flash and it is a mixture of experimentation and reading; it is an iterative process. It’s probably like learning a foreign language (it’s probably a lot like that). Try, goof up, try again, ask for help, etc.
“So the issue is: what processes that we don’t know about benefit from a full explanation in advance? It seems the easter egg story is one of those. It did not inhibit creativity or the learning process. Other success-oriented processes are not so easily described as Read This First. (think teaching your kids to tie their shoes or reach acceptable performance in cooking over-easy eggs) But more to the point: what is going on in the head of the person who wants to climb some new mountain?”
So that’s a really good set of questions.
When should you read the instructions and when should you learn by trial and error?
And, more importantly, how do you tell the difference?
20 years ago I spent a very small amount of time teaching other people how to use software programs like Microsoft Word. I remember the biggest hurdle for people was not so much learning how to do new things, but it was figuring out that there were new things to learn in the first place. For example, if you don’t know that your software can do search and replace, you’re not going to look it up in the manual and learn how to do it.
The larger issue is that detailed instructions only work for certain things. Not for art, for example, or for building a unique business, which I’ve come to think of as a form of art.
Instructions are good for tools. But tools only build what you want them to.
I see various people online trying to sell people $2,000 hammers because, “once you have a hammer, you can build a house for yourself and never pay rent again.” Metaphorically speaking.
And I see people giving detailed instructions for how to use a hammer, but they start from detailed calculations of the density of different kinds of wood, the force required to drive the nail, and an analysis of the holding power of different nails under shear and straight line forces. Again, metaphorically speaking.
What’s hard to find is straightforward, complete instructions on how to do tasks that a relative novice can do, if carefully taught.
And it’s hard to find the elusive information that will help you know what you need to learn.
Here’s a question: How do you approach new “mountains”? How do you know when to wing it and when you need expert guidance?
I really enjoyed this article! Though as a Sandwich Generation granny nanny I was more interested in reading about the making of the eggs than the rest
Very intriguing! I used to be the one who always read the directions but life has been so busy, I don’t do it as often so I don’t think my eggs would ever look as good. But it would certainly be fun and interesting activities for grandparents and grandchildren.
Thank you, too, for an earlier post (June?) explaining some more details about Google analytics. I have explored that quite a bit but there’s so much more to learn. And your article was a HUGE help to me. I was quite pleased to discover some of the articles I have at other sites really are making a positive impact. Thank you so much.
Happy Easter!
Glad to hear, Kaye. And you may be glad to hear that I’m also working on a set of step by step instructions for getting Google Analytics set up property. There’s a little bit more to it that just dropping in your code…
It’s actually a good example of the kind of thing from my comment above: Since a new user doesn’t understand the ins & outs of GA, they don’t even know to look for something like instructions on how to be sure site search is tracked, or how to make sure you know the exact page that’s sending you traffic, not just the domain. When it’s done I’ll announce it here on this site, of course.
Sounds interesting! I’ll watch for it
Have a great Easter weekend!
Clearly you can see the difference….great looking eggs and snow flake design..
I think this will really work and thanks for the help!!
Well like any other newbies i grasp everything that you feed me then edit what is really needed for creating my small business. Expect me to follow this site always.
I like to learn more about mobile searching for the current trend is more about mobile media and how we can generate traffic trough them..Can’t wait to read the article..
very well said.. i would love to know and learn more about your experiences.. thank you so much for sharing your knowledge regarding this matter.. this is indeed useful for all the bloggers out there
Those were really nice egg art. It’s my first time to see one so beautiful.
You have implemented very nice technique in decorating and egg. You’ve made it beyond the usual Easter egg. Nice nice!
Those eggs rock. I’d like to apply those techniques too in the coming Easter.
I think this will really work and thanks for the help!!
Very effective post, i would love know about this.
I love this… so simple and so true! The eggs are fantastic
Thanks, Julie!
You are a very artistic.. It seem so hard to do because there are so many details.. But it is surely a fun thing to do..
You got me in an Oh! Such a great talent, very artistically done wish to do it myself but i think it hard doing it.
This is great! I really love to try this one.. I really love decorating eggs every Easter Sunday.. And your design is so unique!
Good job and good designs.. Thanks for sharing! You could make business out of these little guys..
It’s also why I try hard to document things as I do them, to make my own instruction sheets for my future forgetful self. |
This is will be a great thing to to make.. It is so cute!
Finally I discover this site, I really love to know about it, Thank you for this brilliant explanation..
Very nice egg..It so nice for the Easter egg hunting..GREAT! |
Very artistic style, the eggs look so damn fantastic.
The eggs really look so cool and amazing, nice art.
If following minute detail(instruction )can get us through mile then this would be my motto. I am not good at following instructions, when I am excited to do something I go for it without much thinking. This is a great post. sometimes we learn from kids too. I hope somebody out there can give this real step by step instructions on blogging, something that doesn’t use slang or computer jargon, that a newbie like me can fully understand and who do instruction on straight English.
Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately, I’ve done most of these already. I guess it’s time I go through my blog and eliminate less relevant posts.