Pushing Past the 'OK Plateau'
My heart pounded as my fingers guided the cursor to the link on the screen. This was it—edits for my first published piece.
I’m sure there are things to fix, but I bet she loved that intro, I thought to myself. I wonder if she’ll tell me how great my examples were!
As the Google document loaded onto the screen, a gasp slipped through my lips. I’d never seen so many highlights. Worse than the terrifying number of corrections was the paragraph-long comment at the bottom of the piece. With kindness, my editor explained the shortcomings of my article.
My pride wasn’t just dethroned, it was obliterated.
As I read through the notes, my eyes were opened with new clarity. These new edits cast a shadow on every piece I had written. Reluctantly, I asked my husband, “Do you think my writing is hard to read sometimes?” As graciously as he could, he confirmed what I already knew to be true.
While this moment was embarrassing for me at the time, it has since then become one of my greatest lessons. What I experienced was a pretty common reality. I had simply fallen prey to a phenomenon author Joshua Foehr refers to as the “OK Plateau.”
STUCK ON THE PLATEAU
According to the research of Psychologists Fitts and Posner in the 1960’s, our brains learn a new skill by traveling through three phases. First we must cognitively understand the skill, then physically apply it, and then once we are able to reach a certain level of competency, our brain moves that skill into the automatic phase. Because we know it well enough, we don’t need to improve our ability to do it. This last phase is what Foehr refers to as the, “OK Plateau.”
Here’s an example. I bet you’ve been driving a car for ten, fifteen, maybe even thirty years. But this doesn’t mean you are ready to sign up for the Indy 500 or audition for the next Hollywood chase scene. And just because you happen to play a game of pick-up basketball every lunch hour doesn’t mean you’re on your way to being the next Michael Jordan. Chances are your skills have remained pretty consistent.
The same can be true for our writing. Writers most definitely write, but writing every day is no guarantee of mastery. It may only bring you into the “automatic” phase like I had experienced before I submitted my first piece.
I blogged for years, learning the skill of stringing words together and forming my thoughts to the praise of the handful of family and friends who read them. Nothing is wrong with that, but though I had grown in my writing, I didn’t realize I had cozied up on a nice plateau.
FINDING THE WAY UP
So what can save our writing from this stasis? Quite simply, it’s what I found out the hard way—feedback. The biggest way to move out of the automatic phase is by deliberately giving yourself feedback, specifically feedback that brings out your weaknesses.
Let’s say you play that game of pick-up basketball, but instead take on a new team with more difficult players. You’re going to be faced with more opportunities to see the particular part of the game where you made mistakes, and if you choose to practice to change those areas, you will keep growing.
By realizing our errors, we start ourselves right back at the beginning of the learning cycle. Now we must learn again, practice again, and in the process we will grow in our craft.
While training for the American Memory competition, Foehr learned this lesson the hard way, as he faced his own plateau despite his dedicated practice. He found out firsthand that “regular practice simply isn’t enough. To improve we must watch ourselves fail and learn from our mistakes.” And for the writer, this feedback most often comes by means of other people.
This idea should not be foreign to the Christian. We know better than anyone that God told Adam it is not good to be alone, so why should we be surprised when the world of science tells us there is great benefit in others who can correct, challenge, and show us where we need to grow? Isn’t this the purpose of the church body, who help us out of our own plateaus, to admonish, rebuke, and encourage us to righteousness (1 Thess. 5:11; Heb. 3:13, 10:24–25, Heb.)?
The nature of sin is to lurk unseen in darkness, while God consistently calls us with the help of the body to welcome the light of correction (John 3:19–20). Our writing faults are surely not sin, but it’s incredible to see God has designed our brains to excel and grow by some of the same principles that he grows his own children spiritually.
A WRITER’S FEEDBACK
If we want to get out of our writing rut, we need to fill ourselves with opportunities for constructive feedback. Perhaps this is through editors, friend’s critiques, or writing groups that show us where we can do better.
We can also do this by trying our hand at a completely different genre that stretches us out of our comfort zone and back into the risky feeling of being a beginner. If you are a non-fiction writer, have you tried conveying truths through the means of fiction? Could you develop your use of imagery as you try your hand at poetry?
Another helpful tool is to take your work and hold it up against the work of skilled authors. Absorb their words and compare them to your own, not with pride and jealousy, but out of humility and a desire to see where their excellent writing shows our own weaknesses.
As we search out feedback from others, we must not only receive it, but also apply it. James reminds us to not only be hearers of the word, but doers also (Jas. 1:22). So too, in our skills we must hear feedback and then apply it. I’ve been through enough edits to know that applying doesn’t only mean clicking “accept all changes” on a Google document. Rather it’s a purposeful internalization and application.
It means scanning your words and going through the questions you’ve learned you must ask. Have I said too much? Am I using the passive voice? Do I have the audience or myself in mind here? Our questions here will be as different as our writing styles and our personalities, but the point is that we must be diligent to apply feedback.
PUSHING PAST THE PLATEAU
In the end, nothing is inherently wrong about our brains going into automatic mode. God created us with purpose, and he knew that we don’t need to spend our energy perfecting every skill that doesn’t matter.
Yet, for those skills we do want to hone, we can be encouraged that we do have the ability to continue to push past our learning plateaus. We have many opportunities available to grow in the gifts the Lord has given us.
And then when we get that document full of red marks, we can face it with joy knowing it will only help us better serve the Lord with our craft.
Brianna Lambert is a wife and mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She is a staff writer with GCD and has contributed to various online publications, such as Morning by Morning and The Gospel Coalition. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.