
On Mastery - tomh
http://gapingvoid.com/2012/05/31/on-mastery/
======
swombat
I completely disagree with many points in this article.

There are a great many people out there who are very good at building stuff
but utterly fail at "being successful". And conversely, there are people out
there who suck at doing the stuff they're supposed to do but are very good at
being successful. The two are orthogonal.

If you focus entirely on "your craft", whatever it may be, and ignore the
skills that will enable you to deliver the resulting mastery to actual people
(in particular sales and marketing, which most "I just want to be really good
at X" people seem to think is beneath them), then you won't be successful.
You'll just be one of those people who spends their life wondering why they
were always penniless and couldn't get the things they wanted or have the
impact they deserved to have even though they were really good.

The world is full of smart, competent people who don't know how to build their
success, don't know how to market and sell themselves. Don't be one of those.
Be a master - sure - but also learn how to translate that mastery into real
success.

Re: mastery being more satisfying than success - that's only true if you're
not broke. An empty belly, or the inability to afford even the most basic
things you really want, makes mastery a hell of a lot less satisfying.

~~~
keithpeter
I understand what you are saying in the context of the audience for this
forum; coders and those running software start ups, and I think you have a
point. Those who see refining their coding craft as their central interest
_do_ need to link up with market facing people to become successful.

However, I think the gentleman running the sushi bar in the original article
has no big money worries if he is charging $600 a head for 10 seats with half
hour turnaround!

~~~
swombat
_However, I think the gentleman running the sushi bar in the original article
has no big money worries if he is charging $600 a head for 10 seats with half
hour turnaround!_

And do you think that is a product of "lucky" celeb status (if there really is
such a thing) or deliberate sales/marketing (performed either by himself or
others, perhaps even without his direct approval) over the last 60 years?

~~~
keithpeter
I agree with you that the gentleman who runs the sushi bar _must_ have had an
eye to his reputation; perhaps capitalising on an early press article or some
kind of favourable review. Small traders have an eye to their marketing as
well as the craft, they are 'canny' in my experience. I suspect that zoned out
coders may be less well equipped in this area.

One of my favourite examples of a very canny maker is Sakuma San...

<http://www10.big.or.jp/~dh/sakuma/index.html>

Mr Sakuma has spent much his spare time building thermionic valve amplifiers
('tube' in US) of a minimal and historically informed kind.

Valve technology is simple, with low component counts, and can sound
excellent, but tends to be 'tuned' to a specific kind of music/programme
material.

------
yason
I can't remember who said it but there's a saying "There are no great things
to be done, just small things with great love." It seems that nothing great
can emerge unless you do what you love to do. And when you do what you love to
do, nothing is great: you just do what you love and keep wondering why all
these people think it's great and think you're successful.

What's success anyway? It's not money; probably all successful people didn't
do it for the money and consequently they also kept doing it after they got
money. Is success about not having to worry about mundane things? In that case
anyone can be successful, just stop worrying. Is success about doing what you
love? In many cases doing what you love invites success but that alone doesn't
necessarily equal success.

I think success is close to arriving at a point in life where you stop
"needing" things merely to complement who you are.

By this rule when you become the advertisers' nightmare you've succeeded
because you don't "need" anything you don't need. Anything you think you
"need" will give a warm feeling of security that always vanishes too soon, and
there's always more. Success is not having to chase shadows to always get
something better: success is to accept yourself as who you are so that you can
be in silence from all the worlds noises and listen to yourself on how to play
your life and out into the world.

If you agree with that then mastery is a device to reach success.

------
6ren
Yes. Mastery is satisfying in itself. In a way that money (and facilitated
experiences) can never be. Notice how extremely wealthy people often keep
working? I tried retirement. It sucks.

for PedantNews: mastery remains valuable only if that skill remains in demand
(e.g. slide-rule proficiency); at $600 a head, how is he not rich?; the
capitalization (and themes) echo _Think and Grow Rich_ (Napoleon Hill); I love
sashimi, but, being raw fish, how can it can be improved beyond the quality of
the fish (displaying my ignorance)? BTW: the film looks great.
<http://www.magpictures.com/jirodreamsofsushi/>

I rephrase it: create value - according to what _you_ feel is valuable. This
differs from YC's entrepreneurial "make something people want", which
emphasizes other's values. It is closer to creating intrinsic
beauty/transcendence. And, IMHO, that is what this guy Jiro is doing: creating
something great. Not _being_ great. He and his mastery are in service to what
he values.

~~~
evoxed
On the run so I can't reply to the rest, but the film is very good. I don't
fully agree with the author's take, but it's one of the better films to watch
if you're struggling to hold on to some passion...

------
keithpeter
"9. A tiny little sushi bar in some ran­dom sub­way sta­tion. Yet peo­ple wait
in line, peo­ple book a stool at his sushi bar as much as a year in advance, a
pri­ces star­ting around $600 a head. Peo­ple have been known to fly all the
way from Ame­rica or Europe, just to expe­rience a 30-minute meal. In a
sub­way station!"

Can authenticity be scaled up?

This particular establishment isn't really a humble 10 seat Tokyo sushi bar in
my (perhaps odd) way of thinking, it is a very good _simulation_ of one but
wrenched from the ecology of such street food places.

So by acknowledging the mastery, we have changed the practice.

~~~
HalibetLector
_So by acknowledging the mastery, we have changed the practice._

by acknowledging the mastery, we have changed the experience for the end user,
but not the practice of creating the sushi. People may reserve a stool a year
in advance, but for him it's the same - people come to eat, he makes sushi.

------
tim_church
The real question is how do we define "success"? Is success making a lot of
money? How much is enough to qualify as "successful"?

We tend to narrowly define success based solely on extrinsic values like money
and status, rather than intrinsic values like mastery, purpose, and happiness.

I think the author is saying that focusing on mastery is more likely to lead
to "success" in the form of happiness and a greater sense of purpose,
regardless of whether or not it also leads to material wealth. Personally, I
agree with this more holistic view of success.

~~~
TDL
Each individual has define success and wealth for themselves. Money is a
default because it is easy to measure, this does not mean it is the right
metric to use.

------
TDL
"The tai­lors have a simi­lar shtick as Jiro."

It's interesting to me that the author unintentionally insults the very people
he intends to put on a pedestal. I guess this is a nitpick, but a shtick is a
gimmick. Jiro, the sushi chef, and Saville Row tailors are certainly not using
gimmicks to drum up business.

------
pirateking
Mastery simply means moving forward continuously. There is no way to achieve
it, for the path has no end.

~~~
drumdance
Overall I agree and like this sentiment as a way to organize your own approach
to a craft.

However, I do think that for most disciplines there is a significant
apprenticeship/journeyman period of a a least a couple years before you
develop the basic muscle memory you need to truly explore the craft and not
just imitate tutorials.

------
stephengillie
"Mastery" is like a buzz-word, but it's had its power in our culture for a
long time. Buzz-words are useless unless a meaning is assigned to them.

To me, mastery means mastery of the basics.

A master chef is a master at slicing, chopping, mixing ingredients correctly,
and applying heat to food in a variety of ways (frying, baking, grilling,
etc). A master carpenter is a master of measuring, sawing, hammering, and
fastening wood together.

My professor for introductory accounting tells his classes that advanced
accounting textbooks have the same chapters as the beginning books, just with
more advanced subject matter. Mastery of accounting would then be just
mastering those basics.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I disagree completely. Mastery necessarily implies a mastery of the basics,
but it is _so_ much more.

A master chef knows how flavors, textures, and colors interact to build a food
experience much greater than the sum of its parts.

A master carpenter knows how the wood she is working with will behave as it is
worked with and finished, so the joints and reinforcements are completely
hidden within the aesthetics of the piece itself.

(I can't speak to accounting, but I would imagine there is a similar
difference.)

The point being that, once the basics are mastered, there is a completely new
level of complexity (and therefore creativity) that can be managed. The true
masters are the ones who are one level above everybody else who is "merely"
great.

------
brasmasus
Based on this article, mastery sounds like a total grind - these are classic
'success trap' descriptions that anyone with an entrepreneurial twinkle in
their eye might recoil from. Doesn't transforming your mastery into something
that works _for_ you sound massively better? To each their own... (kind of
agree with swombat, but I'd think 'master' corresponds to at least a boutique
level of success)

Re: "to me, mastery means mastery of the basics" - People aren't called
masters of something because they master the basics. To me, mastery means
mastery of the finest nuances, which are not basic at all.

~~~
ams6110
Entrepreneurship is itself a craft that can be mastered.

------
drumdance
OT but his Jiro story reminded me of the movie Tampopo, a hilarious Japanese
movie from the 80s about a woman and her struggling noodle shop.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092048/>

------
vacri
Numbering paragraphs in what is essentially a prose article is like thumbing
your nose at the concept of mastery.

~~~
bryanl
I believe those numbers matched up to the his Ignite slides. 20 slides at 15
seconds a piece. He wasn't thumbing his nose at anything.

