On Mastery | Hacker News Reader

On Mastery

gapingvoid.com

62 pointstomh27 comments

I completely disagree with many points in this article.

There are a great many people out there who are very good at building stuff but utterly fail at "being successful". And conversely, there are people out there who suck at doing the stuff they're supposed to do but are very good at being successful. The two are orthogonal.

If you focus entirely on "your craft", whatever it may be, and ignore the skills that will enable you to deliver the resulting mastery to actual people (in particular sales and marketing, which most "I just want to be really good at X" people seem to think is beneath them), then you won't be successful. You'll just be one of those people who spends their life wondering why they were always penniless and couldn't get the things they wanted or have the impact they deserved to have even though they were really good.

The world is full of smart, competent people who don't know how to build their success, don't know how to market and sell themselves. Don't be one of those. Be a master - sure - but also learn how to translate that mastery into real success.

Re: mastery being more satisfying than success - that's only true if you're not broke. An empty belly, or the inability to afford even the most basic things you really want, makes mastery a hell of a lot less satisfying.

I understand what you are saying in the context of the audience for this forum; coders and those running software start ups, and I think you have a point. Those who see refining their coding craft as their central interest do need to link up with market facing people to become successful.

However, I think the gentleman running the sushi bar in the original article has no big money worries if he is charging $600 a head for 10 seats with half hour turnaround!

However, I think the gentleman running the sushi bar in the original article has no big money worries if he is charging $600 a head for 10 seats with half hour turnaround!

And do you think that is a product of "lucky" celeb status (if there really is such a thing) or deliberate sales/marketing (performed either by himself or others, perhaps even without his direct approval) over the last 60 years?

I agree with you that the gentleman who runs the sushi bar must have had an eye to his reputation; perhaps capitalising on an early press article or some kind of favourable review. Small traders have an eye to their marketing as well as the craft, they are 'canny' in my experience. I suspect that zoned out coders may be less well equipped in this area.

One of my favourite examples of a very canny maker is Sakuma San...

http://www10.big.or.jp/~dh/sakuma/index.html

Mr Sakuma has spent much his spare time building thermionic valve amplifiers ('tube' in US) of a minimal and historically informed kind.

Valve technology is simple, with low component counts, and can sound excellent, but tends to be 'tuned' to a specific kind of music/programme material.

You're looking at Jiro charging $600 a head (looking at his website, the course starts at $350 but let's assume an average $600 for the sake of the argument), but for every Jiro there are other 50 sushi masters out there who are probably as good as Jiro (†), are charging only $60~100 per person and still have empty seats every night.

(†) If we are to trust Japanese TV shows, most TV celebrities can't tell a $500 sushi from a $50 one.

But one could argue that in many modern societies, empty bellies are never of issue. Given that you could find the means to sustain certain basics (food, love, friendship, etc), reasoning about "what's next" (e.g. pondering about purpose, what would make you happier) could actually be done without considering, say, money.

The interesting thing in posts like these, I would say, is that everyone puts in the "classic" Wall street boys comparison. Are they really all unhappy, money unconsidered? Is money their only measure in life? Sounds rather generalizing to me..

He's not saying to ignore all the other aspects of life or business.

I can't remember who said it but there's a saying "There are no great things to be done, just small things with great love." It seems that nothing great can emerge unless you do what you love to do. And when you do what you love to do, nothing is great: you just do what you love and keep wondering why all these people think it's great and think you're successful.

What's success anyway? It's not money; probably all successful people didn't do it for the money and consequently they also kept doing it after they got money. Is success about not having to worry about mundane things? In that case anyone can be successful, just stop worrying. Is success about doing what you love? In many cases doing what you love invites success but that alone doesn't necessarily equal success.

I think success is close to arriving at a point in life where you stop "needing" things merely to complement who you are.

By this rule when you become the advertisers' nightmare you've succeeded because you don't "need" anything you don't need. Anything you think you "need" will give a warm feeling of security that always vanishes too soon, and there's always more. Success is not having to chase shadows to always get something better: success is to accept yourself as who you are so that you can be in silence from all the worlds noises and listen to yourself on how to play your life and out into the world.

If you agree with that then mastery is a device to reach success.

Yes. Mastery is satisfying in itself. In a way that money (and facilitated experiences) can never be. Notice how extremely wealthy people often keep working? I tried retirement. It sucks.

for PedantNews: mastery remains valuable only if that skill remains in demand (e.g. slide-rule proficiency); at $600 a head, how is he not rich?; the capitalization (and themes) echo Think and Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill); I love sashimi, but, being raw fish, how can it can be improved beyond the quality of the fish (displaying my ignorance)? BTW: the film looks great. http://www.magpictures.com/jirodreamsofsushi/

I rephrase it: create value - according to what you feel is valuable. This differs from YC's entrepreneurial "make something people want", which emphasizes other's values. It is closer to creating intrinsic beauty/transcendence. And, IMHO, that is what this guy Jiro is doing: creating something great. Not being great. He and his mastery are in service to what he values.

On the run so I can't reply to the rest, but the film is very good. I don't fully agree with the author's take, but it's one of the better films to watch if you're struggling to hold on to some passion...

"9. A tiny little sushi bar in some random subway station. Yet people wait in line, people book a stool at his sushi bar as much as a year in advance, a prices starting around $600 a head. People have been known to fly all the way from America or Europe, just to experience a 30-minute meal. In a subway station!"

Can authenticity be scaled up?

This particular establishment isn't really a humble 10 seat Tokyo sushi bar in my (perhaps odd) way of thinking, it is a very good simulation of one but wrenched from the ecology of such street food places.

So by acknowledging the mastery, we have changed the practice.

> by acknowledging the mastery, we have changed the practice.

I'm somehow (without irony) enlightened by this statement.

So by acknowledging the mastery, we have changed the practice.

by acknowledging the mastery, we have changed the experience for the end user, but not the practice of creating the sushi. People may reserve a stool a year in advance, but for him it's the same - people come to eat, he makes sushi.

FWIW: there's something fishy about the "random subway station". Jiro's place is currently located in Ginza, a rather upscale neighbourhood in Tokyo.

The real question is how do we define "success"? Is success making a lot of money? How much is enough to qualify as "successful"?

We tend to narrowly define success based solely on extrinsic values like money and status, rather than intrinsic values like mastery, purpose, and happiness.

I think the author is saying that focusing on mastery is more likely to lead to "success" in the form of happiness and a greater sense of purpose, regardless of whether or not it also leads to material wealth. Personally, I agree with this more holistic view of success.

Each individual has define success and wealth for themselves. Money is a default because it is easy to measure, this does not mean it is the right metric to use.

"The tailors have a similar shtick as Jiro."

It's interesting to me that the author unintentionally insults the very people he intends to put on a pedestal. I guess this is a nitpick, but a shtick is a gimmick. Jiro, the sushi chef, and Saville Row tailors are certainly not using gimmicks to drum up business.

Mastery simply means moving forward continuously. There is no way to achieve it, for the path has no end.

Overall I agree and like this sentiment as a way to organize your own approach to a craft.

However, I do think that for most disciplines there is a significant apprenticeship/journeyman period of a a least a couple years before you develop the basic muscle memory you need to truly explore the craft and not just imitate tutorials.

"Mastery" is like a buzz-word, but it's had its power in our culture for a long time. Buzz-words are useless unless a meaning is assigned to them.

To me, mastery means mastery of the basics.

A master chef is a master at slicing, chopping, mixing ingredients correctly, and applying heat to food in a variety of ways (frying, baking, grilling, etc). A master carpenter is a master of measuring, sawing, hammering, and fastening wood together.

My professor for introductory accounting tells his classes that advanced accounting textbooks have the same chapters as the beginning books, just with more advanced subject matter. Mastery of accounting would then be just mastering those basics.

I disagree completely. Mastery necessarily implies a mastery of the basics, but it is so much more.

A master chef knows how flavors, textures, and colors interact to build a food experience much greater than the sum of its parts.

A master carpenter knows how the wood she is working with will behave as it is worked with and finished, so the joints and reinforcements are completely hidden within the aesthetics of the piece itself.

(I can't speak to accounting, but I would imagine there is a similar difference.)

The point being that, once the basics are mastered, there is a completely new level of complexity (and therefore creativity) that can be managed. The true masters are the ones who are one level above everybody else who is "merely" great.

On the contrary, mastery is not a buzz-word. The trades have fairly strict guidelines on who can be considered a master. Mastering the basics is what an apprenticeship is about.

Based on this article, mastery sounds like a total grind - these are classic 'success trap' descriptions that anyone with an entrepreneurial twinkle in their eye might recoil from. Doesn't transforming your mastery into something that works for you sound massively better? To each their own... (kind of agree with swombat, but I'd think 'master' corresponds to at least a boutique level of success)

Re: "to me, mastery means mastery of the basics" - People aren't called masters of something because they master the basics. To me, mastery means mastery of the finest nuances, which are not basic at all.

Entrepreneurship is itself a craft that can be mastered.

OT but his Jiro story reminded me of the movie Tampopo, a hilarious Japanese movie from the 80s about a woman and her struggling noodle shop.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092048/

Numbering paragraphs in what is essentially a prose article is like thumbing your nose at the concept of mastery.

I believe those numbers matched up to the his Ignite slides. 20 slides at 15 seconds a piece. He wasn't thumbing his nose at anything.

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