The Price Paid for Mastery.

So all this talk about mastery didn’t necessarily start this year; I still remember stepping into Susan’s class sophomore year and her telling us that at least 10,000 hours are required to be a “master” at something. I did a bunch of different calculations just for mere curiosity (Intrinsic motivation at its best!). But, all this talk of “mastery” resurfaces in Pink’s book. He says “mastery” is a very tough thing to achieve with lots of hard work and dedication required for it to happen. What I want to do is to emphasize just how hard that road can sometimes be, with nothing else than examples from musicians (Oh yay! Otilio’s talking about guitars again). The first musician I wanted to mention was Tom Morello (a celebrated guitarist), who started practicing the guitar avidly when he was studying at Harvard. He practiced for 8 hours a day everyday (coincidentally, according to Susan’s 10,000 hour idea 8 hours a day means “mastery” in 3.5 years). Well Tom Morello graduated from Harvard with a bachelor in Political Science; however he soon became a male stripper shortly after moving to Los Angeles in order to support himself. Since then however he has done numerous thing including working with Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, pursuing a solo career as the “Night watchman”, and his new band Street Sweeper Social Club (he was also included as a character in Guitar Hero 3).

The next person I’d like to mention worked with either Marilyn Manson or White Zombie, maybe even both (frankly I can’t remember). But I do remember the words he said, he spoke to Guitar World magazine about his experience as a struggling guitarist trying to “make it”. He spoke of his living conditions, he lived in a cramped small New York apartment filled with cock roaches and working dead end jobs on the side; he also said that anyone should expect to live like this for at least five years before the band they play in gets truly recognized. Anyways, the point is that “mastery” really is a tough thing to accomplish, and the road leading to it is definitely not something that should be taken lightly.

The fear and pain that goes into mastery

What is mastery and how do you know when you have finally achieved it? The truth is that there is not such thing as mastery. According to Daniel Pink's book Drive, it nothing that we can truly accomplish. Mastery is an asymptote. You can get closer and closer and closer but never really achieve true mastery. Even if you spend every waking moment of your life truly practicing whatever it is your doing for the next ten years you will not master it. This is the thing that discourages me the most about doing a senoir project in the first place. How can we display mastery if it is impossible to do so to begin with. The only thing we can do is get close. Even with getting close, there is going to be a ton of work and not enough time to do so. Pink also said that there is going to be pain involved with mastery. To be completely honest, I am horrified at the amount of responiblity I will have to deal with if I even start it. All the due dates and the planning and the teachers breathing behind our backs tell us to “do our best” and “try our hardest”. On top of that we had other class work to be doing and universities to apply to. How do I get over this fear and rise to mastery?

Getting the ball rollin'

Needless to say, I'm a bit nervous about starting this senior project. I have a lot of different ideas, but I feel -and fear- I lack the confidence to pick one and stick to it. From Drive I've learned that I need autonomy, mastery, and purpose in my work in order for it to be successful. While at the Senior Retreat, I learned that I need my project to have an impact on others not just myself, and that it should be something I have a passion for. Every idea I've had feels too easy, too hard or as if it doesn't encompass all of these different factors. I'm scared my project will be too easy and will leave me unfulfilled at the end of the year or that it will be too hard and will be impossible to finish.

One idea I'm taking into consideration is to make a movie. I'm not talking about a 5 minute movie like the ones made during creativity week nor do I want to make a full 2 hour movie; I want to create a movie that is roughly 45 minutes long- maybe an hour. There are two reasons behind this project. 1) I want to leave an impact on whoever watches the movie and 2) I want whoever was part of the process to leave with a feeling of accomplishment.

I love when I am watching a movie and at the end I think to myself: I need to watch this again. I love when a movie is so good that it lingers in the back of my head. Those movies that I just have to tell someone -anyone- to watch this amazing movie. I want to create a movie that stays with the viewer long after they've left the movie theater. I don't plan to do that right now, but I do want my movie to have some type of impact on the person watching it. The movies I like best are the ones that make me want to ask questions. I'm not looking to make the next INCEPTION, but I want my movie to incite an interesting conversation or make someone see the world in a new light. I want it to have some type of effect on people.

I can only imagine how I might feel at the end of the year when I have something to show for what I've been doing this whole year. I think it would be better if I could share this feeling with others. I know that I can't make this movie on my own- at the very least I'll need actors, right? Well, I want everyone that helped me throughout the yearto watch the finished movie and have a feeling of "wow I helped create that".

Then what am i doing?

"Mastery is an asymptote? But an asymptote is never ending! What's wrong with this guy?"

These were my thoughts when I turned from page one hundred and twenty-five to page one hundred and twenty-six in the book Drive and I saw the heading in bold. I understood two pages of writting with the aide of only a heading and a diagram. With this I went on reading but now with a sort of disapointment. The reading said exactly what I had predicted, "..mastery is an asymptote. You can approach it. You can home in on it. You can get really, really, really close to it. But like Cézanne, you can never touch it. Mastery is impossible to realize fully." (Pg.126) It sounded so obvious to me yet to unreal. Instantly after reading this I thought to myself, why try to get better at something if you'll always have to feel like you'll need to get better at it still? Simply to be better than others? I thought that that couldn't be because it would be bringing in extrinsic motivation.

I believe it was right of the author to put the truth down for his readers, because it warns the reader and gives them another reason why to keep playing soccer, basketball, and all the concepts we want to master. He directly tells the reader that he will never achieve mastery, but indirectly says to do it because you simply enjoy doing the activity that way you will fade away from the extrinsic motivation of wanting simply to beat someone at this activity. Although I was torn down at first, I now believe that section of Drive built me up stronger in this esense.

Something to call your own

Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. These are the three elements of motivation that Daniel H. Pink talks about in his book. We are completely free to do whatever we please for our project, so the concept of autonomy, in this case, is taken care of. With this freedom, finding motivation shouldn't be so hard since we can do this project on anything. If we were to have been assigned what to do for the project, that would limit our ideas and the projects probably wouldn't be as good because we wouldn't be doing something we really enjoy doing. I really like the idea of being able to do anything we want, but what's going to make it difficult is the fact that there is an endless list of things we can do, and I think that is why I'm having such a difficult time figuring out what it is exactly that I'm going to do.

As for mastery, I believe that it doesn't really exist. There are some people who are better at what they do than others, but nobody is perfect at anything. Practice does not make perfect, it only makes you better, but not really to the point where you are the best. For example in art, there is no such thing as perfect. Pretty much anything could be considered art and anybody can create art. It is all about creating something you visualize; something unique. Something only you see. One of things that has always bothered me, but I know it must be done, is the fact that schools give out grades to students in art classes. I am not a big fan of that because there's no way a simple number can be put on your creativity. Art should be all about having the freedom of painting, drawing, or sculpting anything you like. It's about creating something you can call your own.

Passion. As far as passion goes, I am not sure what it is yet, but I know once I find out I will do my project based on that. That way I know I will be giving it my all if I'm really passionate about it.

Mastery Is An Asymptote

It’s true how mastery is an asymptote. No one is ever a complete master of anything. There may be someone that is really good at a task, but that person is not a complete master of it. No matter how much this person practices this task, he will only reach closer to mastery but never reach it. The person will never reach mastery because there is going to be some faults in the way this person executes the task. Even though these faults may not be big, they are still there and block the path to complete mastery.