The Mastery Curve
The Praxis team kicked off 2020 this evening with the Opening Seminar for our January cohort.
I've hosted these Opening Seminars every month for two and a half years now, and each one still fires me up like it's the very first.
Explaining the Praxis philosophy, the roadmap of the curriculum, the why behind everything in our program ... it makes me excited all over again about what we're building.
This world of ours is rich with opportunity once you know how to navigate it. All the sub-truths of this big truth make up the cornerstones of the Praxis philosophy:
Engaging with the world: You don't need anyone else's permission to build something awesome
-If you want something, go take itComporting yourself: The bar isn't that high to stand way out from the crowd. Most of the difference stems from little changes in your habits (being fast, communicating well, writing thank-you notes, practicing non-zero days)
Creating opportunities: Lead with value and opportunities will follow
-Portfolio > everything elseEngaging with people: The incentives of human interaction are fairly simple to break down, and once you do, that becomes your framework for value and opportunity creation
As with all good truths, they're both simple and all-encompassing. I've become more and more convinced that the above is an inevitable piece of the future -- both for individuals and for the way our world works as a whole.
On a personal level: mastering the above is the key to unlock whatever opportunities you want to go chase. It’s part of your future.
On a broader level: the internet changes the way we interact, and it’s biased towards people who embody the above habits. They aren’t self-explanatory (yet) because they aren’t built into our framework for interacting with the world, but I suspect they’ll become a part of our paradigm as we evolve to our digital world.
I may be wrong (even most experienced theorists are, and of such authority I am not), but after every Opening Seminar I host, and seeing how people’s worlds transform when they embrace the above, I sincerely hope I’m right.
In this email:
The Mastery Curve
2019 in Review
Implicitness
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The Mastery Curve
The rhythms of growth fascinate me.
A couple years ago I read George Leonard's book Mastery. In it, Leonard talked about what he calls the "Mastery Curve" -- the way we measure our own growth. Our growth seemingly comes in fast bursts, then dips slightly, then plateaus and holds steady for a while before bursting again. During the plateaus, all the pieces are coming together to fuel our next burst of growth, but we aren't aware of it happening. We experience all of our growth as happening at once.
Two lessons I find fascinating in this:
The plateaus make it hard to measure actual progress. It's hard to see your own growth until you sit down and measure the before and after.
Being aware of the mastery curve makes it a lot easier to be patient with the "slow" seasons of growth. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean you aren't moving ahead; just because it feels like you haven't made progress for months doesn't mean you aren't quietly preparing yourself for a burst.
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2019 in Review
How does the above serve as a preamble to my yearly review?
I measured 2018 in memories. (You can find my recap post here, if you're curious).
I recapped 2019 with more specific measurements:
accomplishments
rebuilt the Praxis curriculum a couple times
went from being a coach myself to coaching our coaches
(approx.) doubled my efficiency and output (not a hard measure, but I get way more done than I did a year ago)
significantly streamlined my content creation process (and got much better at consistently creating content)
moved three times before going mostly nomadic (a dream of mine for a long time)
the things I learned and the ways I changed
completely reinvented the way I approach idea synthesis
began a love affair with whiteboards
learned how to sail
became a lot bolder in taking risks and going after what I want
stopped caring as much about the obstacles getting in my way
became a (very amateur but very happy) trail runner
the biggest lessons
learned to be patient while life evolves
fell a little more deeply in love with the hard parts, too
learned that ideas happen much better when you let your subconscious mind do the work (which led to a revamping of my creative process)
my list of favorite memories
(spending a weekend on the Kiawah River in Charleston, canoeing a silent lake while the leaves were changing in the fall, hiking the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan, speaking at FEEcon, climbing South Carolina's tallest mountain in the rain, countless beach sunsets, swimming in a freezing cold lake at sunset ... far too many others to list)
what I'm carrying with me into 2020 (read about that here)
When I sat down to write my 2019 recap, I didn't feel like it was going to be very exciting. But the more I explored, the more I realized just how much growth the last year has brought be. It's just hard to measure when you're in the middle of it. We can’t see the peaks for the plateaus — but just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
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Implicitness
Favorite quote from this week’s reading:
"Economy, in humor as in art, does not mean mechanical brevity but implicitness. 'Implicit' is derived from the Latin word for 'folded in.' To make a joke like Picasso's 'unfold,' the listener must fill in the gaps, complete the hints, trace the hidden analogies. Every good joke contains an element of the riddle -- it may be childishly simple, or subtle and challenging -- which the listener must solve. By doing so, he is lifted out of his passive role and compelled to co-operate, to repeat to some extent the process of inventing the joke, to re-create it in his imagination. The type of entertainment dished out by the mass media makes one apt to forget that true recreation is re-creation." — Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation
And then later down the page:
"The artist rules his subjects by turning them into accomplices."
…
Have a great week getting back in the swing of things after the holidays. Here’s to kicking off 2020 with arms wide open.
See you next week,
Hannah