Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Ego wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:26 am

Micromastery:Learn Small, Learn Fast, and Find the Hidden Path to Happiness
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/297979/micromastery/

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.

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.

1) various talk with professionals who spend 10 yrs+ in given field and I thought that I grasped something before (usually) paying them for visit/convo (yes, I know this funny curve of Dun..-Krun..., I can't have space in my mind for exact name for every factoid, sorry)

so I mean medical profs, PhDs at uni, older guys in my industry and so on.

2) if we count "education" (as mindless remembering facts and then being tested by mindless repetition) or reading posts of some smart people online as possible convo I would choose:

in school they said
"the fact you gonna change jobs more than last generation"

on forum (paraphrased/changed/mixed to my current understanding of the world):
,,first gonna be outsourced jobs sent by mail/fax/internet, then something which can be sent physically, then we gonna have mayhem or you can sleep calmly if you're med professional or good blue collar worker (as long as you haven't hurt your back by 2050)"

@jacob
interesting observation.

jacob wrote: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...

...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.

lol- My take on the book is that I very much like the "micro" as well as the general philosophy and practice recommended by the book, but Twigger describes himself as somebody whose primary learning mode is "by doing" , which is at best my secondary mode, so some of his specific suggestions or descriptions either didn't serve to pique my interest or were a bit lost in translation. So, I felt compelled to reread some of Taleb's take on reading vs." tinkering", and came to conclusion that "versus" is not the functional perspective.

I also happen to be reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and I could definitely see some examples of the benefits of micro-mastery. For instance, Franklin taught himself how to swim by reading a then popular book on the topic, "The Art of Swimming", and made up some of his own tricks, and showing off this skill served to help him make social connections in a new location. He also made use of his minor skill in poetry writing to construct rhymes that helped him remember how to do other completely unrelated mechanical tasks.

According to back of envelope calculation, I might have enough life-energy hours left to allow me to make a bucket-list of 500 micro-masteries, whereas I could likely only "afford" 50 meso-masteries, so that is part of the appeal for externally aging ENTP me. Secondary to this calculation was notion that if goal focus of ERE is skill-mastery towards Renaissance-like lifestyle (as opposed to SWR minimization) and/or definition of freedom is something like:

..relearning how to give yourself permission to be interested and engaged...in anything. - "Micromasteries" - Twigger

Trial and error is freedom...Avoidance of boredom is the only worthy mode of action. Life otherwise is not worth living.-"Antifragile" - Taleb

Then freedom could be measured in something like potential for flow towards mastery with monetary concerns secondary to ability to achieve access to challenging new learning curve in alignment with druthers.

I liked Twigger's micromastery idea because it gives permission to limit the scope, which is helpful if you're the kind of person who takes on too much or procrastinates because a task seems too daunting. 'Learn to cook' and learn to garden' are big, somewhat nebulous goals but 'learn to cook an omelette' and 'learn to grow tomatoes' are much more manageable.

I was working at a Plumbing company right out of High School about a year or so in I had a brief conversation with my boss about how me and my partner thought it was unfair that he let so and so take time off when they had no vaca time available but did not let another guy who had vaca time.

Boss - "It's none of your fucking business who I let take time off or how I run my business, if you do not like it you are welcome to leave."

Did you?

jennypenny wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 26, 2019 2:55 pm

I liked Twigger's micromastery idea...

Thanks to the numerous mentions around the boards I picked this book up today! Looking forward to reading it. Is much of it immediately actionable?

Bankai - No I did not, I simply had a solid understanding of my importance and role at the company and any company for that matter. Basically nobody gives a shit about your feelings,as an employee you are simply a tool and some tools are more useful than others.

2Birds1Stone wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 27, 2019 7:08 pm

Is much of it immediately actionable?

Yes, it's intended that way.

Thanks Jacob, I finished it and enjoyed it very much. Reading Atomic Habits now. Much gratitude to the folks here for awesome book recommendations.

I was out walking our new rescue pup today and ran into a neighbor I hadn't seen in a while (our girls went to school together but are grown and gone now). She said her husband, who is 62yo and a marathon runner/health nut, retired last December and then found out in February he had double hit lymphoma. He's doing ok after a monstrous year of treatments but the prognosis is never good with that type of lymphoma. He's lucky he's walking again because of the tumors in his bones but he'll never run again.

For some reason this news hit me hard. Maybe it's the time of year -- I had my first two melanoma plucked off in fall '12 -- or maybe it's just that I've been stuck in the weeds for a while and needed to hear something like this to (re)gain some clarity and refocus my energy. It's time for me to shed the last of the dead weight in my life and get back to working my way through my bucket list. My list is (sadly?) full of things I want to learn and skills I want to master more than trips and other traditional bucket list stuff. I'm happiest when I'm chewing on a bone.

@jennypenny:

My 79 year old multi-millionaire friend who has always been fitness/health nut also now has bone cancer. Meanwhile, my 79 year old mother who never exercises and eats way more than her recommended allowance of cake is recovering well from her hip replacement surgery. It's either luck of the draw or complete avoidance of stress. Anyways, it just simply is not the case that health and wealth maintenance are more than nominally analogous. Physical fitness, obviously, is another matter.

I think one thing that may have been valuable to me that might change everything for me is a recent vlog I listened to on youtube. The couple were FI millionaires who loved their jobs/business and wanted to keep working. The host asked them what made them decide to quit. It was when they realized they were paying 50% of their earnings in taxes, they decided it was crazy.

I have no doubt they wanted to say that they didn't want to work half of the time to pay for people who don't work, but that is politically incorrect. Regardless, the thought keeps popping into my head. What am I paying in taxes between property, business, w2 income and sales tax. Why do I keep sacrificing my physical, mental and emotional health to pay for an increasingly welfare state when I can stop working right now....

is it what rich people from 1st world believe?!
what kind lack of perspective.

also, it seems there are separate g factor for street smartness and school smartness.
also2, tax lawyers and so on.

@Sky posted this is another thread and I thought it fit well here. Wonderful story.

http://www.bluemoment.com/200pm.html

Once my father sat me down and said I cannot have 4 children, one pickpocketing at the train station, another taking out puncture, and so on... get better grades next time or start doing pull ups and I'll buy you a gun [so that I could become a proper goon.]

fiby41 wrote: ↑

Mon May 30, 2022 12:47 pm

Once my father sat me down and said I cannot have 4 children, one (...), another taking out puncture, and so on...

What is "taking out puncture" ? It's not good, but what do you mean?

All in all, it sounds like your father told you: I want to be proud of at least one of my kids. Please make me proud and grow and learn useful things. And I'm glad that you listened to him.

In 1984 I met Nelson Vails. He handed me the Olympic silver medal he had recently won and while I was trying to pick my jaw up off the floor, he said, "You look like you have good legs for cycling. You should give it a try." I did and it changed my life.

A year later, I was worried about competing against a girl who had a very fancy European bike while I was riding a cheap borrowed no-name bike. After I won the race, my coach put his arm around my shoulders and said, "See? You don't need a fast bike if you have fast legs."

It turns out the general principle applies to a lot of things.

@DutchGirl taking out a puncture means fixing a punctured tyre. It was in relation to an earlier part of the rant which was "there are people who can afford to/ buy a new car ever year."

I'm the only child so I think it was about k- vs r-selection strategy.