Micromastery
Robert Twigger
When it comes to learning a new skill or diving into a new hobby, most of us are dissuaded by the amount of time and effort such tasks require. That’s where micromastery can help.
Micromastery aims to eliminate the phenomenon of demotivation, which can often stand in the way of success. By breaking up a goal into small, achievable stages, micromastery encourages you to focus on a specific skill before moving onto the next one. The sense of accomplishment you feel from completing each stage will motivate you to keep going until you finally achieve your bigger goal.
Micromastery is a mental workout. Our brains are constantly changing, and if we don’t give them exercise by learning new things, we will fail to forge new neural connections that allow us to perform tasks. Indeed, we could end up forgetting how to do something if we allow our neural pathways to become weakened through inactivity.
Micromastery consists of six elements; the first three involve an entry trick, a rub-pat barrier and background support.
First, every micromastery involves an entry trick, which is a cunning scheme that speeds up your performance and pays off immediately.
To illustrate this, let’s consider the act of balancing stones on top of each other. The entry trick in this case would be to find stones that have three raised bumps in close proximity, in the shape of a triangle. These three bumps will create a small platform that another stone can easily fit on top of and stay in place.
Second, micromasteries each have a rub-pat barrier, which is the obstacle that arises when two required skills are incongruent with each other.
The name of this element comes from the game of simultaneously rubbing your stomach and patting your head. If you try it out yourself, you’ll see that it’s often difficult to do on the first attempt, hence the barrier.
If we continue with our previous example of stone balancing, the two skills you would need to coordinate are working out how to balance the stones while also visualizing the shape of the tower. Let’s say you’ve found five stones that are the perfect shape for stacking, but then you find out that the third stone doesn’t have the three small bumps needed to balance another stone on top of it.
To defeat this barrier, it is necessary to focus on each skill individually; eventually, it’ll become easier to do both at once.
The third element of micromastery is background support, which clears your path of any roadblocks.
Ask yourself: what will help me become successful? Do I have the right equipment to learn this new skill or task? Do I have the time? How can I make time for it?
To make this point more concrete, let’s look at drawing. Say you want to learn how to draw perfect Zen circles, which is the special Japanese technique of drawing circles in one brushstroke, or two at most.
What will help you achieve this skill is a really nice pen, one that makes you feel good using it – this could be a fiber-tip pen or a brush pen, or any other pen that can produce clean brushstrokes.
So, those were the first three elements of micromastery.
The other three elements of micromastery are payoff, repeatability and experimentation.
Have you ever tried to learn an exciting, impressive skill only to end up throwing in the towel halfway through?
Experiences like that illustrate why there has to be a payoff that will encourage you to keep putting in effort. If you feel like you’re getting better at something, that feeling of success will make you want to continue.
The key is to ensure that the payoff is both achievable and unambiguous. This is why mastering the art of cooking an omelet first is better than going straight to learning everything necessary to become a master chef.
Once you know how to make a great omelet, it will provide you with a sense of achievement, which will motivate you to continue learning.
The next element of micromastery is repeatability. If you can replicate a micromastery over and over again, you will be able to see your improvements with each repetition, increasing your confidence.
The sixth and final element of micromastery is experimentation. Experimentation enables you to play around with the skill or task you’re trying to learn, which prevents the process from becoming tedious.
Furthermore, it maintains your curiosity, which helps expand your desire for further knowledge and involvement with the task at hand.
SUMMARY
Learning something new can sometimes be overwhelming and can demotivate us from sticking with it.
That’s why it’s much more efficient to learn various smaller tasks quickly and work your way gradually toward mastering a skill, which is a method called micromastery.
Micromastery involves six main elements: an entry trick, the rub-pat barrier, background support, immediate payoff, repetition and experimentation.
