The Tools We Have Yet to Master
There are tools I use every day, which I am far from mastering—tools which I don’t even consider getting better at using. Things I use as much is needed to accomplish a goal at the time but not the type of high intentful focus to develop mastery. It's a passive relationship.
Consider someone achieving incredible mastery of something as simple and mundane as a stick… for combat, traversing terrain, reaching, and all the other little things it could be used for, only fully realized by growing fully familiar with it’s length, weight, the feel of it… Sure, there probably isn’t much applicable benefit in my current life to seek mastery of such a thing. But what about the things I do use daily which are far more complex? What else do I overlook the mastery of which could actually benefit me greatly?
One of the most commonly used, yet taken for granted/ under-utilized tools is the cell phone. It enables capabilities which were futuristic fantasies not too long ago and the capabilities just continue to be expanded and enhanced. I can use it to capture the sounds around me, my voice, spoken words can be transcribed as notes, so many ways to augment images, sounds, documents… The creative whims in enables me to immediately act upon is incredible. There are ways to make a living entirely with just a cell phone at this point...
Communication between people across the world—a global platform—social media is essentially the enabling of the question “hey if you had 15 seconds to speak to the entire world, what would you say?”. The entire world isn’t necessarily sitting there paying attention to whatever I post next, but whatever I post is freely available for anyone to see and interact with… This capability isn’t usually treated so monumentally. Probably because that “15 second” opportunity has been extended indefinitely. Taken for granted.
Many tools at our disposal are taken for granted more often than not. This focus here upon modern phones is just one example (which could be expanded upon so much more really). There are plenty of things that are used without the intent of developing further understanding. Sometimes it doesn't seem worth it. Especially with endless interests against limited time. However, taking the time to become more efficient with the tools used consistently makes future time spent far more fruitful—ultimately saving time and getting more out of it.
Moving beyond passive relationship into a mindset of developing mastery calls for intentional interruption of default interaction. There is a reflexive impulse to retreat from and gloss over the things we don't understand--the areas that require exhaustive energy, attention and rewiring. It takes an extent of resilience and force to go beyond what is familiar. Pushing through this instinctive recoil to focus on the details and understand them further leads to enhance mastery.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be with the intent of fully mastering something but rather, interacting with the intent of learning more and increasing efficiency, rather than simply treading the familiar grooves formed—”going through the motions”.
I tend to lean more heavily into my intuition and being able to figure things out through experience. This is a powerful skill to train for sure, but relying on this method alone only goes so far. Thus, I have been practicing a more mindful approach to everything I want to be better at by identifying particular fundamental skills to dissect and practice.
I recall someone speaking about this mindset in regard of how athletes train by identifying the fundamental skills that are not so well developed and practicing those repeatedly. In doing so, their overall performance at the time of competition moves far further ahead.
If time was the only axis of mastery, I would have much greater skill of some things. But it’s not all about just how much something is used. It takes attention toward the elements of what that thing is and how it can be used—consciously practicing development of those familiarities in conjunction with all else. Time is merely the capacity for change. What we do with that time is what shapes the change that occurs.
Mastery of anything ultimately requires an extent of self mastery, given that we ourselves are part of any interaction we could possibly have of course.
Mastery is a dance, using each element to its fullest extent, in conjunction with one-another, dynamically according to each moment. The goal is balance, but details are inevitably overlooked in view of the bigger picture. Giving attention to and developing each specific part of all that is to be balanced, approaches mastery.
