We trained six different styles of kung fu in a month, and I could barely pronounce half of them.

Tai chi at dawn some mornings, qigong on the others. Wing chun one afternoon, Shaolin forms with a staff the next, and styles whose names I’m still not confident spelling. Wudang is where kung fu originates, and the tradition there holds the whole family of practices rather than one branch, some soft and slow, some hard and explosive, kept deliberately in balance. The town wears that balance openly; the symbol for it is painted everywhere you look.

At first the variety felt like a buffet at the exact moment I wanted a discipline. By week three I understood the variety was the discipline.

You can’t choose depth from a menu

The question every beginner secretly wants answered is: which one is mine.

The honest answer is that you can’t know from descriptions. Watching wing chun told me nothing about how wing chun would feel in my own hands. Every style had a different purpose, a different energy, a different way of asking my body to move, and every move was a real thing, a kick, a punch, a block, being built into muscle memory. The only instrument that could evaluate any of it was contact. Sampling widely was the measurement phase, and a school that teaches six styles has effectively built measurement into the curriculum.

The pull is data

Some practices you do because they’re on the schedule. A few of them follow you out of the room.

You catch yourself running the movements during a break, then film the sequence so you can keep it. You start planning where it fits once you’re home. That pull is information. Which practices resonate with you is a fact about who you are, discovered the same way you discover anything real: by noticing what you return to without being told. I paid attention to which styles I kept reaching for, and those are the ones I left with, on video, so the reaching could continue.

Creative life runs on the same instrument. The mediums, subjects, and forms that keep pulling you back are telling you where your years want to go. Most people either never sample widely enough to feel the pull, or they sample forever and call the sampling a life.

Breadth is a phase, and it earns its keep by ending

Range at the start is exploration. Range forever is avoidance.

A month across six styles showed me exactly how tall the mountain is. I’m just now realizing how long it takes to get really, really good at even one of these, and that realization is what breadth is for. You survey the whole territory precisely so you can choose where to dig, knowing what you’re leaving unchosen. Then the long, unglamorous work begins on the small set of practices that pulled, and it begins with your whole attention, because the surveying is done.

A practice stack, chosen and small

What I brought home was a small set: the sequences that kept pulling, folded in alongside the strength training I already do.

Different practices doing different jobs in one body, the soft balancing the hard, each one kept because it earned its place during the sampling. That’s the shape I’d recommend to any creative. A handful of chosen practices, small enough to go deep on, varied enough to feed each other, arrived at by trying far more than you kept.

Try widely and notice what pulls, then give your years to the pull.

FAQ

Should you learn many skills or master one?

Both, in sequence. Breadth at the start is the measurement phase: you sample widely because contact is the only way to evaluate a practice. Then the practices that pull you back get your depth. Range at the start is exploration; range forever is avoidance. The sampling exists to end well, in a small set you commit years to.

How do you find the right creative practice?

Through contact, and the pull that follows it. Try enough forms that your reactions become data, then notice which ones follow you out of the room: the medium you keep returning to without being told, the work you think about during breaks. That pull is a fact about who you are. Choose from the pull, and treat everything you tried and released as the cost of an accurate choice.

Why does Wudang kung fu include so many styles?

Wudang is where kung fu originates, and its tradition holds the whole family of practices rather than one branch: tai chi, qigong, wing chun, Shaolin forms and more, some soft and slow, some hard and explosive, kept deliberately in balance. Each style serves a different purpose, and training across them shows a student both the breadth of the art and where their own depth belongs.

How do you know when to stop exploring and commit?

When the survey has done its job: you’ve felt enough of the territory to know what you’re choosing and what you’re leaving, and one pull keeps repeating. Commitment before that point is a guess. Exploration past that point is a stall. The tell is honest: if you already know which practice follows you out of the room, more sampling is avoidance.

Three things to take with you:

1. You can’t choose depth from a menu. Contact is the only instrument, and the sampling phase is how you measure.
2. The pull is data. The practices and mediums that follow you out of the room are telling you where your years want to go.
3. Breadth earns its keep by ending. Survey the territory, then commit your whole attention to the small set that pulled, and let the rest go.

I send a weekly note on building a creative life where who you are and how you live are the same thing, and you can join it below.