The Mystery of Mastery

Laetitia@Work #64

Hi everyone,

I’ve long been fascinated by the subject of mastery, i.e. being truly skilled in a particular field. The blend of expertise, experience, acquired skills, dexterity, and the staging, packaging and storytelling of all these things is captivating, isn’t it? 

A virtuoso musician has mastery of their instrument. A Formula 1 driver has mastery of their vehicle and the track they race on. The term grand master is mainly used in the context of chess and martial arts to describe an individual who has achieved an exceptional level of skill, dedicated decades to the practice and teaching of their art, and is respected (or even revered) in their discipline. But in Japan, the concept applies to all sorts of disciplines, even the most mundane ones, elevated to the status of art through the care and respect given to them.

What does it mean to master a skill—whether it's a professional skill or any other still like drawing or dancing—and how does one achieve it? This is the question American writer Adam Gopnik explored in a book titled The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery. "Real Work" is the term used by stage magicians to describe the sum of skills, cunning, and technical mastery accumulated that make a magic trick exceptional. The magician said to have done "real work" for a given trick is not necessarily the one who invented the trick but rather the first to master every detail of their performance.

Can a general formula for mastery be derived from a series of learning scenarios? To answer this question, the author has put himself in the position of a student, practiced with a drawing master, studied magic, learned to drive, asked his mother to teach him bread making, taken boxing lessons, and ballroom dance classes with his daughter. In his musings on mastery, he celebrates all the imperfections that make us human. And it is precisely these imperfections and expressions of humanity that should have a greater place in the world of work! Here are four lessons on mastery inspired by Gopnik’s work.💡👇

#1. Mastery is both common and extraordinary

Mastery is when you do something that seems impossible to someone else. Yet, just look around, and you'll realise it's everywhere: 

Everybody’s good at something. Being bad at something reminds us of how we ever got good at anything. (...) Everyone is good at something, yes, but what I perceived in apprenticing myself to masters in various fields is that we are surrounded by masters. I don’t mean the world-class saxophone player one might fail to recognize in the subway. I mean something more mundane. I mean the mastery all around us, all the time. (Adam Gopnik)

The gap between the best in their field and the hundreds (thousands) who follow them is smaller than we think. We marvel at the people on the podium, forgetting that those who aren't there are achieving (almost) equally impressive feats. We admire great chefs like Pierre Gagnaire or Anne-Sophie Pic (two of France’s most famous chefs), but there are many other culinary masters capable of brilliantly preparing dishes we would be unable to create. The great masters are everywhere. You might be one too because you implement elements of mastery in your daily work.

It may be everywhere, yet mastery remains "magical" because the combination of skills, experience, knowledge, and dexterity used to accomplish something masterful enables actions that seem magical to those who don't know how to do them.

#2. What matters Is your unique vulnerability

We search in the arts not simply for the signs of skill, which are, if not easily taught, still teachable. We search for the signs of a unique human presence (...) We never really love an artist’s virtuosity, or if we do, it feels empty. We love their vibrato, their unique way of entangling their learned virtuosity within their unique vulnerability.

In essence, mastery concerns humanity more than technical perfection. This reminds me of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing objects by enhancing their flaws. The discipline encourages us to accept objects with their imperfections. The term Kintsugi means "golden joinery." It involves restoring damaged objects, not by concealing the cracks but by enhancing them with gold, a way of celebrating imperfection and fragility.

This is why mastery doesn't stop with the first signs of ageing. Matisse, suffering from debilitating arthritis in his later years, still created works of genius, expressing his artistic uniqueness in a more minimalist way. What’s the lesson from all this? Pursuing mastery involves fully embracing your vulnerability and unique personality, not aiming for soulless technical perfection.

#3. It is the sum of small things

The master creates the illusion of something coherent and unified. In reality, mastery is a series of steps or tasks, a sum of small things. Whether it's the small melodic themes a jazz pianist combines or the rhythmic patterns composed by a boxer's punches, it's a sum of fragments.

Gopnik studies drawing with an artist who takes an ultra-realistic approach. With him, he learns the art of small steps and the use of the tools of the trade. He understands the immense utility of an eraser. A drawing is a collection of broken lines, often erased and redrawn. Just as 24 frames per second create the illusion of movement in cinema, mastery gives the impression of forming a coherent whole in the eyes of the uninitiated. But when you break it down into its different moments, you understand that it is not unattainable.

Gopnik devotes part of his book to mastering magic. He concludes that the small things that make up a mastered magic trick are simple: 

About all an outsider may say is that the surprising thing about most magical methods is not how ingeniously complex they are but how extremely stupid they are—stupid, that is, in the sense of being completely obvious once you grasp them. (...) That is why a magician’s technique must be invisible; if it became visible, we would be insulted by its obviousness.

#4. Mastery lives in a mortal body

There is no mastery without a mortal and limited body. The stronger the limits, the more wondrous the achievement. Art is usually the result of encountered constraints. Gopnik mentions the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, the brother of the philosopher, who lost his right arm during World War I but continued his career as a pianist, notably performing works for the left hand composed for him by contemporary composers, including Maurice Ravel's sublime concerto for the left hand.

Our knowledge of our mortality, of our physical limits —of the number of heartbeats we’ve used and have left—infects and infests everything we do and make. And if this turns us anxious and panicky in some ways, it also makes us generous in other ways, more inclined to value the performance of mastery even when it’s flawed, to see in frailty and imperfection not only the signs of life, as in the singer’s vibrato, but the signs of the limits of life.

Because it is embodied in a mortal and loving body, mastery is not transcendent. We also experience it in the eyes of the people we love. If there's one thing that defines "real work" even more than the sum of small things that make it up, it's that we almost always have an audience or spectators in mind when we do it. 

We engage in the perpetual play with the invisible Other.

Meaning is the face of the Other. (...) The self becomes a soul only when it sees another self.

The real work is what we do for other people.

👉Also read: Artist vs Artisan: what's the difference?Laetitia@Work #44

👉Also read: Dignity is what matters, but what is it exactly? Laetitia@Work #6

💡Check out the latest articles in English I wrote for Welcome to the jungle: What if rest was a form of resistance?, How auto unions are advancing the idea of a shorter working week for all, What does the 4-day week mean for gender equality?

💡Check out the latest articles in French I wrote for Welcome to the Jungle: Temps de travail : ce n’est pas qu’une question de durée !, Recrutement : osez embaucher des ex-indépendants !, Un monde sans travail est-il (vraiment) possible ?, « Dans tous les métiers, on se plaint de ne pas avoir assez de temps », Les salariés sont-ils (vraiment) devenus « déloyaux » ?…

🎙️ The latest episodes of my Nouveau Départ podcast are: La semaine de 4 jours : une folie ?, Crypto et châtiment, Crise du logement & marché du travail, Énergie : comment les Américains ont pris leur indépendance, La transition numérique des villes 🎧 (in 🇫🇷)

📹 I’ve recorded a new CORTEX video with Welcome to the Jungle : Mal payé un jour, mal payé toujours ? (sur le biais d’ancrage) (in 🇫🇷)

📹 I’ve recorded 2 new videos in English with Welcome to the Jungle, both of which about the 4-day work week: “As a movement, the 4-day workweek is clearly gaining momentum now that a large union is pushing for it” & “Your productivity depends on the quality of your attention rather than the number of hours you clock in”

Miscellaneous

🤔 This Economy Has Bigger Problems Than ‘Bad Vibes’, Tressie McMillan Cottom, The New York Times, December 2023: “Bad economic storytelling says to millions of Americans in an election year that they only think that they are struggling financially. Good economic storytelling would figure out how to account for their experiences and imagine a better future. People need child care and dentists and affordable housing and safe transportation and accessible education. Telling them to instead enjoy the fact that they can buy a Tesla is a fundamental misunderstanding of what economic policy is supposed to do, which is to make people’s lives better.”

🌳 The nature cure: how time outdoors transforms our memory, imagination and logic, Sam Pyrah, The Guardian, November 2023: “It’s not that natural settings don’t have lots of stimuli, but the attention they capture is indirect and spontaneous – we are drawn by the movement of a bird or the sound of our feet padding on fallen leaves. This gentle attendance to our surroundings is known as “soft fascination”, and while we are immersed in it, directed attention can be restored. Maybe that’s why I often find myself recording voice notes, or tapping ideas into my phone, after spending time in nature.”

🧑‍💻 Gen Z is bringing a whole new vibe to the workplace: anxiety, Eve Upton-Clark, Business Insider, December 2023: “The turmoil of the past few years has made workers of all ages more stressed: In Gallup's 2022 workplace survey, 52% of workers in the US and Canada said they felt stressed at work daily — a record high. In the UK, work-related stress, anxiety, and depression are up 14% from 2020, according to Health and Safety Executive statistics. But Gen Zers, who are just beginning their career journeys, are having an especially difficult time.”

Merry Christmas to you all! 🎄🤗