Mastery: Why become a Master?

What are the benefits of mastery?

Previously, we discussed "What is Mastery": A difficult, obsessive journey in the pursuit of becoming highly proficient in a person's craft. Masters take their craft and read about it, study it, practice it and spend tens of thousands of hours at it. To go on that journey, it's important we see the benefits that come with it. If the great masters often hated parts of the journey, why did they continue with it?

Purposeful sacrifice brings joy

There's a deep joy to mastery. We are always proud when we accomplish difficult challenges. In a world focused on pleasure and short-term gain, sacrifice is always put to tomorrow.

But people who frequently sacrifice short-term pleasures for long-term gains come out much happier. We have a name for this: Delayed gratification. We intuitively know that trading something nice now for a greater purpose later will make us better. A healthy lunch today instead of McDonalds will leave me feeling better tomorrow. A 5k run in the pouring rain today will give me energy and help me sleep tonight. By trading something easy and pleasurable today for something more difficult (and sometimes painful), we know we will be better off tomorrow.

Masters understand this. They are completely focused on the journey of purposeful sacrifice. When he wakes up at 5am to train or write that chapter, he knows that the pain now is a stepping stone towards something good.

Sacrifice now makes me valuable in the future

The journey of mastery is uncomfortable, sometimes painful. In those uncomfortable moments, each person needs something to help push them through. The novice who chooses this journey sees something in the distance, something that makes today's sacrifice worthwhile.

For many sportspeople like Michael Jordan or Serena Williams, they're desparate to be the best in their sport. Or with someone like Marie Curie, she was obsessed with scientific discovery. The master sees a north star somewhere. This north star gives them a strong purpose, helping them push through each challenge.

What does a master's career look like?

In the last post, I drew a picture of the "Zone of Mastery". Here it is again on the right of the picture.

As the novice goes up the "slope of enlightenment" (the journey of gathering more knowledge and wisdom), she encounters increasingly more difficult problems. She achieves new milestones and applies new solutions. She develops her skills, becoming more and more valuable. Each achievement unlocks new contacts and she builds up with a well-connected network of people. She can collaborate with people in this network to make even more discoveries and breakthroughs. She can meet other masters who are working in similar fields.

Over time, she builds career capital.

What is Career capital?

In the book "So Good They Can't Ignore You", Cal Newport argues that great jobs are rare. Traits like freedom, autonomy, a great team and a great company don't exist in every job. Therefore, to find those traits, we need to have something to negotiate with - valuable and rare skills.

We should note there are many rare skillsets that are not valuable, for example tiddlywinks. And there are many valuable skillsets that are not rare such as teaching. So when we're looking for career capital, we want the intersection of valuable and rare.

How do we find valuable and rare skills?

There are a few ways to find valuable and rare skills.

One way is to get so good at what you do you surpass everyone else. For example, you could be:

• A software programmer who knows the ins and outs of your programming language, algorithms and data structures.
• A world-record holder for the Iron Man.
• A surgeon who has practiced for 20,000 hours.

Another way is to be able to solve painful problems that others don't want to solve, like:

• A sewage tank cleaner
• A project manager for high-risk, high-cost projects
• An engineer in an offshore oil rig

A third way, and arguably the simplest way, is to combine skillsets together to create something unique.

• A project manager specialist in the medical domain.
• A barista who focuses on high-quality Turkish coffee.
• An electrician specalised in software heating systems.

Finding these niched skills and becoming excellent at them makes you unignorable. People can't help but call you to solve their problems.

Masters understand these things. It takes hard work to become excellent. Painful problems often require rare skills. And finding a niche is valuable.

How can I trade career capital?

The person with a rare and valuable skillset will find themselves in positions of endless opportunity. She will be offered positions, projects and money to get her to join the team. But that's just the beginning. Dream jobs are made up of more than mere title or salary.

Take a moment to think of 3 traits in your dream job.

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...

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Some common ones are:

• The ability to be creative.
• The freedom to choose what to work on.
• The flexibility to work when and where you want.
• Contributing towards something impactful.
• Working on something fascinating and meaningful.

A good job might have 1 of your dream job traits. But very few jobs have most or all of your ideal traits.

People get their dream job because they have career capital to trade.

Mastering a set of rare and valuable skillsets can help you secure the job traits you want in exchange for your expertise. This is one of the best reasons to aim for mastery at something. When you are respected and valued enough, you are trusted to work on whatever you want however you want. You can negotiate to work from home. You get selected for the exciting new project. You can demand a 30 hour week instead of a 45 hour week becase your employer knows you can deliver. All of these traits are in your grasp if-and-only-if you have valuable skills.

What does mastery actually feel like?

Discipline

Masters have a deep sense of fulfillment in what they do. The novice who embarks on the mastery journey will consistently re-invest in her own future with purposeful sacrifice. Each investment builds off the previous one, giving exponential gains over time.

This practice of continuous sacrifice also creates discipline in the novice, allowing them to accelerate up that "slope of enlightenment". World-class violinists are able to practice 8 hours a day because they built up the discipline in their youth, practising 1000's of hours in their childhood and teenage years. World-record holders developed their training discipline over years and years. Getting up early when we want to is easy. But getting out of our cosy bed to go out in the rain or make a breakthrough requires we develop strong discipline.

Flow state requires some mastery

Discipline isn't just about getting through the pain to achieve success. It enables other pleasures along the way. As discipline is established, the novice gives themselves the space to work on difficult problems with intense focus.

They forget the outside world. They get into the zone. We call this state of mind the flow state. Anyone who has experienced this knows it is a feeling of great pleasure.

But thoughts need to happen at a certain pace to achieve this state. It is difficult for the novice to get there. They are bogged down with the low-level information. The student mathematician is distracted looking up terms and formulas instead of focusing on the bigger picture.

So fluency is a requirement to get into the flow state. And fluency is something a master has plenty of.

Confidence

Masters are confident in their work. They speak confidently, write confidently, argue confidently. Their fluency means they can see the forest from the trees. Where a novice sees everything as important, the master knows what is important and what they should ignore.

For example, a novice designer might obsess over their colour scheme, wanting it to be new, contrasting and perfect. The master designer knows the 5 colour schemes that work and how to tweak them, allowing them to focus on more important things like the user experience. Having walked the path and made the mistakes, the master is confident in their opinions, able to put them forward strongly with good reasons.

How do masters describe their experience?

It's difficult to find masters describing their experience of being a master. Most masters don't see themselves as masters. They see the journey as a never-ending path of growth. Each and every one of them focus on the journey of getting better and discovering more.

For example, Kobe Bryant describes his mindset in one of his speeches: Those times when you get up early and you work hard; those times when you stay up late and you work hard; those times when you don’t feel like working, you’re too tired, you don’t want to push yourself, but you do it anyway; that is actually the dream. That’s the dream. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

And Michael Jordan's focus on challenging oneself: I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.

Or if we look at the academics, Richard Feynman is a nobel-winning physicist who was known for his relentless curiosity and deep thinking. Here he describes himself as "always feeling stupid".

Kent Beck is a renowned software developer and has authored many frameworks and books. He is famous for saying "I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.".

My take from people like this is that the person who wants to become a master must develop themselves into someone who is driven by the journey, not the destination. This constant pursuit requires grit and discipline. Whether it is in an academic, professional or sports field, the master is always moving forward, grappling with new and difficult problems. It is a difficult, exciting and meaningful journey and it is available to all of us.