- Oscar Wilde

If you ask any successful authors, directors or composers what style manuals they followed during their apprenticeships, the most common answer will be 'none'. They either had a role model to emulate or they experimented until they defined their own style of creation.

We spend a quarter (sometimes a third) of our lives in school. And even after we graduate from school, a good number of us works for the IBMs and the HPs and the TCSs where there is a lot more opportunity to go back to school in the form of workshops and seminars and training programmes. 

In school, we are taught how to do things as per standard practices. A few schools teach us how to do things the way we want them. But they are all focused on teaching how things are done. It is definitely valuable to learn these, but as Oscar Wilde puts it, we learn nothing worth knowing in this manner. 

I take the example of successful authors, directors and composers because these do not have well-defined rules and style guides and manuals. Only the ones who really love doing it will continue to do it and eventually get it right. Those looking for a guide or a manual soon give up and go home. 

When you love to do something, you will find it easy to learn the skills needed to do it. You will find a way to get it done. 

Perhaps schools ought to focus on teaching us to love things rather than teaching us how to do them.