Are You on the Master’s Path?
Date Posted: July 3rd, 2010
No “Weekly Check-in” this week because it turned into this. 
On Friday I finished the book, Mastery, by George Leonard. Very good book, especially considering how short it is. There’s a lot of stuff from it I could write about, but for this post I’m going to discuss only one thing: the mindsets people have when they learn a new skill. After reading about these mindsets I realized that I haven’t had the master’s mindset for several activities I’d like to master.
Hackers and Obsessers
A person with the hacker mindset gets to some level of proficiency in a skill and then stops doing the work to improve. As an example, someone who goes out dancing every week, but has only taken a beginner class and has no intention of increasing his skill beyond that has the hacker mindset. He’s developed a certain level of competence and is either content to stay at that level indefinitely or would like to improve but doesn’t feel compelled to do the work to get there.
A person with the obsessive mindset will try to force himself to improve faster than is naturally feasible. Let’s say our dancer finished taking the beginning dance class and jumped straight into an intermediate class. He’s struggling with intermediate stuff because he hasn’t mastered the beginner techniques. If his reaction is to force his way through it, he’s obsessive. He’s probably going to injure himself.
I alternated between the hacker mindset and the obsessive mindset in school. Most of the time I’d do the minimum amount of work to get the maximum grade… or if not maximum, at least a grade I could live with. I resented being asked to go above and beyond. I’d try to coast for as long as I could. What was the point in mastering anything when I’d get an A if I did less? If I minimized the amount of time I spent on school stuff I could spend more time doing fun things, right?
For exams I’d jump into obsessive mode in a valiant attempt to pass the tests. I’d pull all-nighters studying, or spend a week or two before the test attempting to learn everything I was supposed to learn until then. By senior year of college this often meant years of material I’d never figured out. Not fun. And not very effective. :/
I’ve, regrettably, been a bit of a hacker (and sometimes obsessive) with music too. When I had piano lessons I never got into the “regular daily practice” habit. With recorder I spent a few months learning what I needed to learn and then happily hacked my way along. I’ve gotten as good as I have just by showing up to dance practice and playing for dancers. Conscious practicing? What’s that? The thing is I’d like to master some instrument, so realizing I’ve been a hacker all these years was a bit of a shock. If I continue this I’ll never master anything. 
Dabblers
A person with the dabbler mindset tries something, encounters some difficulty, and then quits. The dabbling dancer is one that takes the beginner lesson, and soon after quits because “it’s not his thing” or “it takes too long to get any good”. Often he’s too ashamed of looking like the inept beginner that he is. He doesn’t realize that in order to gain competence he has to go through the beginner phase.
I’ve dabbled in SO MANY things, but four things in particular come to mind because I keep dabbling, quitting, and going back a few years later. They are languages, stringed instruments, jazz, and drawing. With languages and drawing I quit because I’m afraid to look stupid and they take a really long time to master. With Jazz, I can’t see the path for getting where I want to go. With string instruments… they’re really hard? I’m actually making some progress on the second two right now. I’ve picked up the ukulele, and have made quite a bit of progress on it alright. The goal is to use it as a stepping stone to guitar and to jazz.
Masters
The master mindset is a lot of things, but most importantly it means that when you’re on a learning plateau (i.e. you working hard but aren’t making on progress) you keep practicing, keep trying to make progress. What’s more you enjoy the practicing. Goals aren’t your primary focus, although you do still have goals. If our obsessive dancer had the master mindset his reaction to not doing well in the intermediate class would be to quit the intermediate class and work on the foundation material he still needed to master. Maybe he’d repeat the beginner class or maybe he’d go to open dancing and practice with some of the more experienced dancers. He’d accept where he was and do what he had to do. He’d also enjoy dancing where he’s at now, or at least consider the end goal worth the temporary awkwardness he’s going through.
I’ve had the master’s mindset in a few things. Three that come to mind are swing dancing, sewing, and intimate relationships.
When I started swing dancing I had the master’s mindset. I loved every bit of it. I learned a lot in the classes. I went to open dancing and wasn’t afraid to practice with the advanced dancers even though I was an awkward beginner. I practiced a lot and I loved the practicing. I’d still be dancing now if Aaron had the same interest.*
I love the process of sewing. I love sewing a straight seam on the machine. I love sewing cuffs on by hand. I also enjoy completing ambitious projects. The combination of these two things, liking the process and being ambitious, are the reasons I keep sewing and keep improving at sewing. I suffer through the visualization and fitting and refitting and refitting and refitting of a sleeve because ultimately I like sewing and the end is worth it. If I only cared about the end garment and felt ambivalent the sewing part, I wouldn’t sew. I’d just buy all my reenactment garb or have someone make it for me.
I had only one boyfriend prior to Aaron. We dated for two years in high school. I took the relationship very seriously. I was willing to work through whatever problems we had (assuming they were workable**), and all in all tried to be the best partner I could be. Not surprisingly I wasn’t the one to end the relationship. With Aaron, I feel the same way. I enjoy the process of being in a relationship. I like having date nights, I’m willing to have awkward intimate conversations that need to happen, I’m willing to admit I need to work on my issues with housework, etc. I want us to thrive. I love the practice and I have goals. I’m on the master’s path.
There’s More to Say, but…
…this post is already pretty long. Even though I just finished the book yesterday, assigning names to the different mindsets has already been useful. I’ve realized that in some areas I don’t have the master’s mindset and I wish I did. *cough*Music*cough*
I can also see it being useful for interacting with other people. There are a lot of hackers and dabblers in the SCA, and having a name for them will make it easier for me to deal with them positively. It’s OK to be a hacker or a dabbler. I just need to not expect everyone to be on the master’s path.
So, yeah, really good book. Highly recommend it. May write more about it in the future.
* We met through swing dancing, so it’s not that Aaron doesn’t know how to dance, he’s just has more of a hacker attitude than I do. As in he’d go to workshops if I was interested, but wouldn’t be pro-active about it. It was really important to me to be able to share the same level of passion about dancing with my significant other, so rather than give up Aaron I gave up dancing and replaced it with music.
** I learned later that my first boyfriend is gay, and had just been figuring that out around the time he broke up with me. Gay is not a workable problem. 
I stopped talking to him for reasons independent of him being gay, but that’s another story…
