Micromastery

October 9, 2017
According to this enjoyably and infectiously enthusiastic self-help manual from Twigger (Red Nile), the key to skill acquisition is to focus on “micromastery,” or the mastering of small, attainable tasks. A micromastery is “complete in itself, but connected to a greater field”; the author compares micromastering a task to making an omelet, which is cooking but not the whole of cookery. Developing micromasteries, Twigger writes, encourages brain plasticity, self-confidence, and time spent in the “flow state” of being fully immersed in an activity and unconscious of outside distractions. To the author, humans are “polymathic by nature,” yet human cultures tend to overemphasize specialization. He writes with verve and has a knack for the illustrative example. For instance, to demonstrate that micromastery in one area can inspire advances in another, Twigger writes that Alexis Carrel, the 1912 Nobel Prize winner in medicine, learned from “his lace-making mother how to stitch incredibly tiny and intricate patterns” and later applied this ability to new advances in surgery. The book’s largest section describes a variety of possible micromasteries to develop, with instructions. Readers interested in expanding their skill-set—whether that means finding the depth of a well, chopping a log into firewood, surfing standing up, or singing even if tone-deaf—will profit from this amusing book.