The Asymptote of Mastery and Skill Meters
Understanding the Asymptote of Mastery
When making major life-changing improvements to your life, it’s handy to understand the Asymptote of Mastery. Anything we learn (improve) follows the same basic pattern, which can be represented on a graph:
In the beginning, we have a period where we learn slowly. We’ll call this the “Acclimation Phase.” We’re more or less “getting the lay of the land” and assessing all of the relevant information associated with whatever we’re learning, then learning the basics of HOW to do it. Generally, the more complex idea we’re learning, the longer this period lasts. Sharpening a pencil has a far shorter Acclimation Phase than learning to juggle chainsaws.
Once we understand HOW to do something and get a handle on the basics, we start learning the skill rapidly. We’ll call this the “Proficiency Phase.” You hone all the basic skills and are able to synthesize them into real-world applications. Progress tends to occur rapidly.
Eventually, progress slows as we inch towards really mastering whatever we’re learning. The closer we get to “perfection”, the more time and effort we require to see improvements. We sometimes call this the “law of diminishing returns.”
So Why Does This Matter?
Modern-day humans tend to be hyper-specialized. Most people excel in one specific realm, and kinda suck in the rest. Think of a typical high school. You have jocks who are really good at sports. Nerds who are really good at academics. Band kids who are really good at music. Woodshop kids who are really good at woodworking. And many of these kids aren’t really good at anything else. They spend a disproportionate amount of time and effort focusing on mastering one realm of their lives, while largely ignoring the rest. It’s the Law of Diminishing Returns. The better they get at that one thing, the more likely they are to keep spending time and effort on that one thing.
That same pattern extends to adults, too. We have a lot of people who are really good at one thing. We don’t have many people who are pretty good at a lot of stuff. We don’t have a lot of generalists.
When it comes to increasing our mate value, specialization will always be an inferior strategy to generalization. We want to become “Jack of all Trades.” That means we have to distribute our finite time and effort across multiple realms instead of just focusing on one. Understanding the Asymptote of Mastery helps us visualize that concept.
Skill Meters
If you’ve ever played an RPG like Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, or Pokemon, you’re familiar with the idea of Skill Meters that measure your character’s attributes like strength, stamina, courage, skill with weapons and spells, maximum hit points, and so on. As your character develops, the skill levels increase. This is a good way to visualize Skill Meters in self-improvement. We’ll utilize charts like the one pictured below. This one is just a sample; the actual traits you’ll track will be specific to YOU.
Across the bottom, you see specific personality characteristics. The idea is to objectively rate how good you are at each characteristic. Note how the space between the numbers increases as the numbers increase. This represents the relative time and effort needed to advance to the next level as you progress along the asymptote of mastery discussed above.
As you progress through your self-improvement journey, this will give you an important frame of reference to visually see where you are, how far you’ve come over time, and importantly, where you should be spending your time.
In the sample above, the time and effort spent to get to level “9” for fitness could be better utilized to move up a level for eye contact, assertiveness, charisma, emotional stability, and small talk.
Inhibition Meters
We’ll use the same concept to track the behaviors and emotions that hold us back. Instead of tracking skill level, we’ll track our ability to inhibit those negative emotions and behaviors. Just like the skill meters, we’ll use this to visually understand where we are right now, how far we’ve come, and where to spend our limited time and effort.
These are the primary tools we’ll be using to measure our progress. As we progress through this Project, we’ll learn all kinds of interesting, exciting ideas that, when implemented, will allow us to live the life we deserve.
~Jason
***