Good Life Project - In Defense Of Mastery: Driven by FOMO or Fabulosity?

Episode Date: December 9, 2015

There's been a lot of pushback lately against the idea of mastery, choosing one thing and putting everything you've got into it.Mastery, it seems, has become almost a dirty word. Why choose just one or two things to master, when your interests span four or five or 10 or 20? Why not just do them all? Isn't that a legitimate way to both feel good and contribute to the world? Isn't being a jack of all trades, master of none the type of person who is most in demand these days anyway?For some, maybe. But, for many others, not so much. I wonder...Is the pervasive refusal to say no to many thing and strive for mastery in one more about fabulosity or FOMO?That's what we're talking about on today's GLP Riff. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, this week's Good Life Project riff is called In Defense of Mastery. So there's been a lot of talk over the last couple of years, really, that I've heard. It started a lot in the blogosphere. I hear it all over social media. I heard a lot in the world of entrepreneurship, especially sort of micro-entrepreneurs, solo entrepreneurs, especially in the space of people who consider themselves creative pros and artists. And it's all about having the freedom to put together a basket of interests to pursue a wide variety of things simultaneously, and to figure out how to do them in a way and on a level that really allows us to potentially mold together a decent living out of all these

different things simultaneously. So the freedom to pursue multiple interests is, and this is sort of one of the arguments that I've really put forth strongly, is in the end, it's the ultimate quest. You know, deep knowledge and total devotion to the pursuit of mastery in a single field has even been to a certain extent demonized. And sort of the pursuit of being the generalist as that's the future has been something that I keep hearing more and more and more. And I wonder if that's true, and I wonder even if it's true for some, if that should really be the general proclamation for all. You know, here's where I raise my hand and say, I may have even talked about pursuing multiple things at once in the past, but increasingly I wonder if part of what's going on here is that people, and let me even rephrase

that, that I have not been willing to endure the intense work, the fierce discipline, and the willingness to embrace the risk needed to walk away or at least temporary shelve certain ingredients in my interest basket in the name of becoming extraordinary at one. And then you add to this, there's a term, a phrase that's become seriously used these days, and you have to ask why, and that term is FOMO. If you haven't heard it before, it's short for fear of missing out. There's this massive, massive sense of FOMO. And you add that to the basket of, well, but if I give up one of the five things that I want to do, maybe I'm going to miss out on what that might give me.

So I'm really beginning to challenge the assumption that the desire to piece together a multi-tentacle living is really about freedom, about the freedom to do all these things. And I'm wondering if blending interests is at least for some, if not for most, really the ultimate manifestation, not of freedom, but of fear and constraint. So do we really feel good about spending our time being okay at a bunch of things, but not exceptional at any? Does this make us feel better than we'd feel earning an equal or better living or just devoting the vast majority of our time to a single pursuit that would allow us to experience that rare, juicy, exquisite sense of profound contentment that comes from having developed a level of mastery over a single discrete set of

skills or a body of knowledge that comes only when that is an almost singular focus, not necessarily singular to the exclusion of everything else in your life, but in terms of how you contribute to the world. Or is the need to not have a three-word answer to a question, what do you do for a living, more a reflection of some blend of an inability to own the intense work needed for the pursuit of mastery, a desire to avoid the potential pain of failure, and a fear of choosing the wrong thing and having to endure the pain of starting over. And then again, that classic FOMO, fear of missing out. I can't answer this for every person. And I never would dream of doing that. But what I do know, on a personal level, I'm beginning to feel like it's time for me to reel

in the nets a bit. And I said this a few years ago, and I haven't really done it in the way that I wanted to. but I'm feeling the call again. I'm getting increasingly dissatisfied with kind of exploring all these different things at once and also becoming known as someone who's pretty good at a whole bunch of things. And I'm yearning more and more to kind of be the X guy and to become known as the X guy, the one everyone turns to for that specific thing and the one who just gets to invest the vast majority of my energies in becoming really good at that thing. Maybe not for life. I'm pretty sure that X will evolve into Y and then to Z over a period of

years or decades, but I'm feeling the need to explore and to master one at a time, or at least no more than two at a time, even if it means leaving certain activities on the table and risking choosing the wrong one, having to correct, and not being able to experience the joy of others, at least for a while. Sequential is starting to replace simultaneous as my mantra

because I yearn for this sense of intensity and focus and intrinsic reward that comes from a single-minded quest to master a particular body of knowledge or set of skills or a field. I want to radiate the energy that comes from not only having attained mastery, but from being in the quest. That innate joy of the process to me is equally, if not more rewarding than the end state. And when you split that energy among three or four or five or 10 different things,

it ain't the same. You don't get that same thing. So yeah, though I also feel, I fear the potentially addictive pull of the pursuit of mastery, I also believe strongly in the ability to put in place mechanisms that support me to let it be humane and to take my time and to honor the quest, but also my deep commitment to be present in everything else that matters to me and I hold dear along the way. Mastery, something that we hear less and less about.

We hear just so much about, you know, do everything you want to do. But is that really making you happy? I'm not going to answer the question for you, but I want to plant the question in your mind. Because if you've been doing that, and you're not feeling the way that you were hoping you felt, it may be a time to reconsider.

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