The Neccesity for Both Newness and Mastery
I know something is up when I feel I’ve been in a rut for more than a few days. Usually this is indicated by an uptick in vices (i.e. drinking, watching porn)*. And always a shrinking away from socializing with others and a general feeling of Toiling in a kind of hopeless, never-ending purgatory.
One new insight I gained this time around was the dual need for “newness” and “mastery.”
If things are starting to feel like a drag, or the tasks at hand seem impossible to complete and there is a noticeable “leaning-away” mentally from the situation, then either one or both of things need to be inspected, and radically changed from the status quo.
In this instance:
I was stressing about the annual audit and how much there was left to prepare for.
How much Sales, R&D and equipment related tasks were fighting for my same bandwidth.
Work was beginning to feel like just “one big project after another”…
I was craving social interaction.
I had “mastered” enough of starting this blog and producing content for it, and now seeking Newness and Mastery for at least the above points.
Every weekend was really starting to feel the same.
So the answer for now is to just do radically new things for the next several weeknights and weekends. And also to think radically new ways of solving the Work problems above (ie pivoting to hiring 2 QA techs vs 1 QA tech and 1 QA manager)
In order to Master something, you have to place a premium of focus/attention to it. But if you get stuck on the path of mastery you must try something radically New in order to get out of a continuing rut.
Likewise the other end would be serially starting and engaging with new things/ideas, but never being disciplined enough to Master and complete what is important. And of course, we are wired for newness, and this allows us to find problems to solve and to continue engaging with life.
And finally, even before examining the ratio of Mastery to Newness, the more fundamental question underlying that is:
What is my Dream? What am I willing to sacrifice almost everything for? What makes the most brutal of Responsibilites worth shouldering?
—-
Footnotes:
*I used to obsess over when I broke a “streak” of abstaining from a particular vice. Or fret when a vice that seemed to not be an issue anymore suddenly reared its head again. The vice itself is the wrong thing to focus on. The better question is why am I acting out more frequentlty and for longer durations?
The answer almost always is because you feel temporarily hopeless about mastering something or doing something new.
In Nascar, in order to win/and not crash, they say “focus on the curve, not the wall.” Similarly, commiting or not commiting vices (the wall) is truly irrelevant. Rather, what about your life narrative or dream is not salient enough to Consume you (so that you don’t have an increasing desire to engage in destructive behaviours?)
