I just finished it. It goes well with chapters 4+5 in the ERE book. If I were to republish, I'd add it to the bibliography, so I recommend it. The first half is a really good defense of the polymath/renaissance orientation. The second half is a bucket list of various micromasteries. If I were to summarize a micromastery, it would be something that's easy extremely narrow in scope and that impresses other people---important for motivation---after putting in ~100 hours of practice.Ego wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:26 amMicromastery:Learn Small, Learn Fast, and Find the Hidden Path to Happiness
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/297979/micromastery/
The idea here is that all these micromasteries make us creative and perhaps serve as a starting point to mesomastery(SP?) or macromastery.
I think where I disagree a bit is the "micro" part. That's probably because I personally favor/advocate for mesomastery, i.e. instead of spending 5000 hours on 50 micromasteries, I prefer 1000 hours on 5 different things instead. E.g. one example in the book is to make a perfectly square block of wood. In woodworking "squaring boards" is indeed fundamental and takes a few 10 hour sessions to learn. But spend 1000 hours and you'll be dovetailing, dadoing, and making furniture of your own design.
Another example in the book is swinging a sword so it sings. That's also a visible (audible) skill that takes ~100 hours to learn, but in and of itself it is not useful. A sword only sings when the edge is aligned with the swing which is crucial for clean cuts. Being able to move and cut takes thousands of hours, but I think this is perhaps more useful to gain that level of understanding.
I am perhaps more focused on whether something is useful to learn something and less focused on whether it's fun or an impressive trick in a social context. Underrating the social aspect of usefulness is perhaps to my detriment. Maybe I should learn to ride a unicycle.