I’ve been struggling a lot lately with Skill Mastery.

I have no problem creating a habit. But moving forward with skills is another story.

It all started when my mom talked to me about why I didn’t try mastering one skill and then just moving on. It stayed with me….why aren’t I doing that? And what should I be doing? Should I be focusing on one thing or should I be expanding to encompass the full complement of what I think of as basic habits?

On one hand, basic habits back each other up. Writing and marketing are great complements, as are eating right and exercising. Some habits just need that - habits with no skill mastery. But on the other hand I can’t shake the sense that I’m not progressing enough. I see a friend who got into weight lifting and is now ripped. Another who is into writing and is now publishing a lot.

My conclusion is that I need more than one habit. The point of this project isn’t to do one thing and then move on. It’s to do many things at once - so how can I strategize to move forward in skills.

I’ve talked about this in a recent post, but I believe it’s about strictly maintaining all habits to daily minimums and dialing up one skill. I envision it as a line of attack…like Go, skill mastery, habit acquisition, and regimentation involves multiple fronts and battles.

Strictness is important - regimentation becomes incredibly hard when Endurance and Willpower are leaking out, even in tasks that are easier or addictive. I enjoy meditating, and I often do more, but when I get to my skill I want to really improve - in this case, writing - I don’t have the energy.

So here’s my overall daily minimals:

Fixed Meditation: One bout of single pointedness

Bodyweights: 2 typewriter pushups or bridges

Dynamic Meditation: 20 minutes

Marketing: 1 action-oriented task

My habits, from an automaticity SRHI standpoint, are AMAZING.

But from a regimentation and mastery standpoint, they’re shaky.

I’m having more difficulties moving from quality practice from one task to the next during a day. The reason is emotional - I feel like I’m not progressing towards Mastery in any given habit. So despite the length of time and the strength of my habits, it’s not paying off enough for me.

The best example is eating - I initially got a great ROI - I lost weight, etc. Now, despite having it solid, I’m hovering around the same weight, while my buddy, who’s been counting calories, has lost tons of weight. I have to remind myself it’s not about the result, it’s about getting good at the process, yet it still bothers me.

Lydia suggests that I should pick one or two specific habits to enter a growth cycle - the problem is that I feel that ALL of them need to be grown - it’s similar to picking a new habit. I feel I need 20 of them. And I feel it’s important to define that emotional state because it’s the cause of a lot of failure - the need to do everything at once, preventing any improvement on anything despite tremendous energy expenditure (emotionally or work-wise). I’ve always referenced it as “life ADD” - but we’ll call it something else. A compulsive urge to multitask and overcommit. I wish I had a good term from engineering for this, because more and more I”m seeing this whole system in terms of locomotion - aeronautics or something, with thrust, drag, acceleration, etc.

And there’s a cloudiness involved with this. I can’t see past the urge to overcommit, but when talking about it I realized that a few things are ok. Eating is ok - I need to clean it up, but it won’t need much additional willpower. It just needs to redirected, as does my fixed meditation. The two things that might actually make the most changes are bodyweight exercises, because it tends to affect mood, and dynamic meditation, which also effects mood. That’s what Lydia says anyways. I have to think about it more.

Strategies Towards Skill Mastery

Habit Exhaustion, Stalling, and Growth Cycles