I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, so I thought I’d write about it. 

I consider myself more intelligent than your average person; more skilled, more logical and generally more capable.  Given that consideration, whenever faced with any task, my thought process has always been along the lines of ‘if that idiot can do it, how hard could it be for me to do it just as well or better?’  Generally speaking, this has always worked out well for me.  The truth of the matter is, I can accomplish any task that I decide I want to accomplish, rather than having or letting someone else do it.  I’ve come to realize though, that that isn’t necessarily a good thing all the time.  While it is definitely positive to be intelligent enough to be able to truthfully make that claim, I believe the net effect is that I have inadvertently become a sort of dilettante.  A jack-of-all trades if you will. 

But here’s the problem.  Jack-of-all trades is only half the cliche; master-of-none is the part I’ve never really considered.  I’ve spent the last couple of (working) days working on a rather difficult (for me) piece of differential calculus.  Now I never learned calculus in high school, so this is all new to me.  And as I worked and worked at it, I began to understand it more, and was able to finally grasp the concept I was trying to learn.  It occurred to me, at that point, that if I was going to be more than just proficient with advanced mathematics, I’m going to have to invest some serious time practicing it, and really perfecting my understanding of it.  Common sense, I know. 

That is the way it works isn’t it?  That’s how all the old jokes, and adages and quotes go, right? “Practice makes perfect.”  Well actually that isn’t necessarily true, although it was pretty accurate until I heard a better version:

Practice does not make perfect.  Only perfect practice makes perfect.

                                                     -Vince Lombardi 

And that’s about as true as it gets.  If there is anything I learned from strength training, it is that you can practice all you want, lift all you want, but if you have the wrong form, if you’re not practicing the right way, you’re not getting any better.  Anyway though, I’m getting away from my original point. 

To truly master something, you have to devote a significant amount of time to really becoming one with material.  Of course, the amount of time that is considered ‘significant’ varies from subject to subject, but the same principle applies.  So I started thinking about this common sense principle, and I’ve tried to consider the subject areas I can truthfully say that I’ve mastered.  Is there a subject that I have consciously devoted a significant amount of time to really develop a working mastery of?  Certainly I’m good at a great many things, but as I thought about it, I realized that the number of things I’m great at is not as good. 

I started thinking about how I ended up being pretty good at just about everything, but not being really really good at anything.  The conclusion I came to is that it is really the logical result for most people who either are or consider themselves to be ‘above average.’  It is for me at least.  The way I’ve always looked at it is that I can be great at anything I want to.  And that is true.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean I can be great at everything I want to, or that I need to be great at everything that there is.  But that is how I feel as though I’ve always operated.  If I find some topic that may interest me (even for a short time), I feel like I can be good at it, and so I should be good at it.  If I can be, why shouldn’t I be?

Consequently, I’ve invested a lot of time being pretty good at a bunch of things, but I don’t really think I’ve mastered any.  I’ve never consciously devoted significant time to something with a clear goal of mastery in mind.  I haven’t ever considered doing that, necessarily, because even though it is the obvious, common sense way to excel at something, I’ve been more concerned with being good at too many other things.

There is only so much time in a day.  You can be good at anything.  Hell, truthfully, you can be good at everything, but not at the same time.  And in reality, you don’t need to be.  I’ve realized it’s much more important to be excellent at one thing, and let other people be excellent at other things, and then put yourself in a position to share your excellence with others, while taking advantage of theirs as well.  Now this may come as no surprise to many people, but to me, it really does.  It takes no small amount of effort of will to admit to myself that there are things that I’ll never be good at.  Things I should never be good at.  Because there are other things that it is more important that I am really great at.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of effort becoming OK with a lot of different topics, but with my new realization in hand, I feel more equipped to narrow down my list of ‘qualifications’ to a much more respectable list of masteries:

I would love to be a great learner.  I would love to learn how to excel at organizing, preparing and executing plans that would help me to master whatever I want to learn.  I would love to be a great husband, and eventually great father.  To have strong and solid values, and to live by those values every day, being responsible and respectable in my actions and in my words.  I would love to be a master in my career too.  Which means I’ll have to stop writing now and go do some calculus.  Boo!

 

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