Sepher Ehben: Reveries — Longstone — #OpenCiv the requirements of responsible citizenship.

Becoming masterful at any given skill requires at least 10,000 hours, 5 years of 8 hour work days, 2 weeks vacation per year. This is not…

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Becoming masterful at any given skill requires at least 10,000 hours, 5 years of 8 hour work days, 2 weeks vacation per year. This is not the “average” time, this is the minimum. You can increase your “return on investment” by learning complimentary and contrasting skill sets at the same time. Working within a “branch” of skills allows you greater possibilities within that skill set and field on knowledge. Working with a number of diverse skill sets allows you to learn entirely new skills and to refine existing ones. Cultivate your passions if for no other reason than to learn how to work, when you learn how to work toward your passions you learn how to apply that ethic to other things in your life.

Understand what you think you know, never be afraid to be challenged, welcome it as an opportunity to learn or you will be stuck like the tortoise retreating in the shell of your comfort zone.

Above all else “mastery” means exceptional competence and integrity. Competence requires capacity and discipline, integrity requires openness and metacognition, best expressed in that antient maxim Gnothi Seuton “Know thy Self”..

Capacity is a spectrum between innate ability and limit of the ability and dedication to learn a given skill set.

Discipline is best expressed by warrior traditions and the recovered with a heavy heart, “the greatest battles are always within”. Holding yourself to a regimen, structured or not, pushing yourself through and past failure and mistakes is the only way to learn where the landmarks on a “landscape of knowledge” actually are from direct experience.

Openness is a requirement to accept scrutiny, to listen to others without judgement but not without discernment. Wisdom is understanding the limits of your own knowledge and accepting the knowledge of other if they are proficient in that domain, if you can’t tell; shut up, listen, learn, until you feel you have something to offer and step up to the table.

Metacognition for the unfamiliar is “knowing about knowing”, more specifically in the context of yourself, understanding how you think. The mechanics and influences of how you think as well as what you think about. This kind of knowledge is the most accessible, dating past the ancient Greeks (who inherited much from elder traditions). “Know thyself” for “the unexamined life is not worth living”. Yet it is also the least utilized human capacity.

Less than 1/4 of any given sample group on any given skill will have a functional capacity ( how well they can actually do something ) remotely close to their perceived capacity ( how skilled they see them selves to be ).

The fundamental failure causing the discrepancy is a lack of metacognition leading to a lack of ability to process new information effectively when beyond the thresholds of personal bias. Be able to do what you say you can do and fully accept the consequences of your failures.

People with genuine mastery over themselves will not be pretentious, or egotistical but they may be very passionate, without a passion for excellence you cannot effectively strive for mastery over self. They may seldom offer information unless they feel it is required but they will be forthcoming to anyone genuinely seeking knowledge.

By Jason Medland on December 10, 2018.

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Exported from Medium on March 4, 2019.