The Art of Manliness - #528： Become a More Competent Human Through Micromastery

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.200 the author robert heineland famously said a human being should be able to change a diaper

00:00:15.920 plan an invasion butcher a hog con a ship design a building write a sonnet balance accounts build

00:00:21.620 a wall set a bone come for the dying take orders give orders cooperate act alone solve equations

00:00:26.900 analyze a new problem pitch manure program a computer cook a tasty meal fight efficiently

00:00:31.640 die gallantly specialization is for insects compelling as that sounds why do so many of us

00:00:37.200 fall short of that kind of ideal and cease to learn new and different skills in our adulthood

00:00:41.000 my guest today would say it's because we approach learning the wrong way his name is robert twigger

00:00:45.200 and he's the author of micro mastery learn small learn fast and unlock your potential to achieve

00:00:50.140 anything today on the show robert makes the case that we often fail to learn new things because we

00:00:53.940 feel we have to learn the whole field of the subject which is overwhelming tedious and demotivating a

00:00:58.840 better approach he says is to first master just one distinct skill that's part of said subject or

00:01:03.620 what he calls a micro mastery we discuss what micro masteries are why they keep you motivated to

00:01:08.160 continue learning that field and in general the benefits of lifelong learning and why specialization

00:01:13.000 is indeed for insects we also discuss what the punk rock scene of decades ago could teach you about

00:01:17.720 tackling new skills and we end our conversation with robert's use of omelet making as a case study

00:01:23.220 and micro mastery after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash micro mastery robert

00:01:29.520 joins me now via clearcast.io robert twigger welcome to the show well thanks for having me so you've

00:01:45.860 written a book called micro mastery learn small learn fast and unlock your potential to achieve anything so

00:01:52.220 what is a micro mastery a micro mastery well i've i've defined it as a as a self-contained unit of

00:02:00.440 doing so it's a it's something that's complete in itself but it's connected to the greater field so

00:02:05.900 that's sort of the abstract version of it but what it is it's kind of like the distilled essence of an

00:02:11.320 activity so i probably if i give you a few examples say the uh when i started the whole process i thought

00:02:19.260 about becoming a good cook and that seemed like a daunting task but then i thought okay i knew that

00:02:25.760 as a test piece for your ability as a cook making a perfect omelet was was often used if you went for

00:02:32.720 a job as a chef they'd ask you to make a perfect omelet so that's that's the kind of the first micro

00:02:38.640 mastery that i that i stumbled upon because an omelet has in it making it all the skills that you need

00:02:45.940 or almost all the skills that you need for far more complicated kinds of cooking and so it's that

00:02:54.140 ability to sort of boil something down and something that's repeatable so you normally only takes a

00:02:58.660 minute or two minutes to make so you can make an awful lot of them so you can get better which is

00:03:02.880 important because you need to to repeat in order to practice something and it needs some kind of

00:03:09.880 payoff you know a micro mastery is something that that needs some kind of payoff so you know people

00:03:15.520 people you know it's kind of like the hey wow thing you've done a trick or you've done something

00:03:20.720 that's pretty cool if you can do a a 360 on a skateboard um people go oh oh that's that's good

00:03:26.640 and you feel a bit better about yourself and i think people underestimate how much feedback we need

00:03:32.040 when we start learning something i know when i started doing aikido the japanese martial art people

00:03:38.060 would say well what can you do and um at the beginning i couldn't really do anything so it didn't feel

00:03:43.640 it didn't feel like i was learning much well let's talk about the benefits of approaching learning

00:03:49.680 with this micro mastery idea as opposed to the way most people go about learning it's like what's the

00:03:55.440 way that most people go about learning a skill and why do you think this micro mastery concept is is

00:04:01.980 better well if you think back to to how you've probably approached things i certainly know i have it's

00:04:07.920 been very haphazard i often sort of get an idea in my head oh yeah i'd be great to learn arabic for

00:04:13.900 example but i sort of buying a textbook i don't really go go much beyond that you know maybe over

00:04:19.300 look up courses i've got a very conventional approach and it's all tinged with boredom i would

00:04:24.140 say that for me the notion of learning having been through the school system it's always got this sort

00:04:29.700 of tinge of boredom about it and so micro mastery was head-on wanted to to get rid of that sort of

00:04:36.020 essential boring element that that is in learning and it doesn't have to really be there so so that's

00:04:43.300 that's really that was the start starting point so once i had worked out that you could really find

00:04:51.240 these micro masteries everywhere i i looked for things which definitely have a fun element and and

00:04:59.160 and there is something kind of essentially fun about about the way they do it what i like about the

00:05:03.900 micro mastery approach is that instead of initially going wide in a field trying to learn everything

00:05:08.400 about it all at once you first take a small step and then you go upstream and that circumvents a lot

00:05:14.220 of what keeps us from sticking with something where it's too daunting it's too tedious and you just give

00:05:19.180 up instead you're having these satisfying little successes that sustain your momentum let's talk about

00:05:25.600 some of the more sticking to the elements of a mic what makes a skill a micro mastery skill so you

00:05:30.020 talk about it's like a self-contained unit so like instead of thinking i'm going to become a better

00:05:33.860 cook i'm gonna learn how to cook an omelet would be example instead of i'm going to become a learn how

00:05:38.600 to play baseball it's like well i'm gonna learn how to throw the ball like a fastball correctly so

00:05:44.020 these are skill they're self-contained um they're repeatable but let's dig in even further like

00:05:48.600 you even there's like i think a six part um it's like six elements you've laid out of what

00:05:54.280 like the components of a micro mastery skill what are those well what i i realized is that the the

00:06:01.780 all micro masteries have what i call i call it the entry trick it's some piece of information

00:06:06.500 that once you're in possession of it it immediately levels you up and what i discovered is that experts

00:06:13.840 often jealously guard this information and you find it out much later when you don't really even need

00:06:17.960 it um i mean i found that a lot of uh artists in the past including some of the sort of the

00:06:23.860 the great masters of the renaissance used tracings when they did crowd scenes they didn't muck around

00:06:29.580 you know arranging a whole lot of models and do it do it from life they actually and they used to

00:06:33.900 swap each other's tracings some of the crowd scenes looks a lot slightly similar it's a it's an entry

00:06:40.120 trick you know it's it's something that immediately levels you up if you know that an artist sometimes

00:06:44.260 uses a tracing to to get one step ahead why not use it yourself and i knew in writing that writers use a

00:06:50.460 lot of of simple tricks that i tend to be um not known about and they certainly don't teach them

00:06:57.080 at school and so i mean the entry trick for let's say surfing is um get yourself a foam board you know

00:07:07.320 a board that isn't going to hurt you when you fall off it and it hits you on the back of the head

00:07:11.000 practice jumping up on top of it on top of your bed you know immediately that's going to give you

00:07:16.880 because it's you know bed is slightly wobbly it will give you an advantage of someone who's trying

00:07:20.960 to learn to surf in you know choppy water so these are these are little information bits of information

00:07:27.900 that can immediately cause you to level level up so and and you find those usually by asking experts

00:07:34.540 they're the sort of shortcuts that they use that the little tricks that they they know about

00:07:39.180 and the next thing is that the as i said you need to have some payoff some something when you've done

00:07:47.020 the micro mastery when you've surfed that wave when you've or stood up on your surfboard when you've

00:07:53.020 cooked that omelet people give you some feedback so you don't want something that's just essentially

00:07:58.660 lonesome and you know doesn't have any kind of end point and the nature of micro mastery is it's

00:08:05.660 small so it's repeatable so that's that's the other element which leads into it being

00:08:10.540 gameable by which i mean you can change the elements and this is how you really start learning

00:08:16.940 it's not really about mindless repetition learning is about tweaking it changing it recalibrating so

00:08:23.900 with the omelets you know do you use one egg two egg how hot is the pan how far away from the heat

00:08:28.500 you hold it uh do you use oil do you use butter you know there are lots of little things that you can

00:08:33.740 alter and make it gameable or or experimental it's taking an experimental approach to something that

00:08:42.220 is very much broadly the same but you can change all these elements and so what's helpful about the

00:08:48.460 entry level trick is that it feels really gratifying to learn and that gives you a boost to keep going

00:08:54.060 another element you talked about and i think it's kind of connected to the uh the entry trick

00:08:58.300 is this idea it's you call it the rub pat barrier or like the counter yeah the barrier is the the point

00:09:06.620 in every every skill that's that's worth having that's slightly looks slightly difficult at first

00:09:13.500 has this point where there are two sort of sub skills push against each other so i mean if you're driving a

00:09:21.180 stick shift car there comes a point if you're learning to drive when it actually interferes with your

00:09:27.180 steering because you've got to think about moving your hand down moving the gear lever and then and

00:09:31.260 then going back to steering and you have to coordinate these two skills and i call it the rub pat barrier

00:09:34.860 because it's rather like patting your stomach and rubbing your head or rubbing your stomach and patting

00:09:40.060 your head these are to coordinate those two things at once seems problematic but you you learn how to do

00:09:45.260 it and so you identify before you even start what are these where's the point going to be in this skill

00:09:51.740 where there are two elements that pull against each other and that's usually when people give up

00:09:55.900 because they kind of think oh this is too hard and but if you already know that's going to happen in

00:10:01.820 in advance you can focus your energies on it and you can use like that like a trick basically to get

00:10:07.020 over that barrier there are often there are often tricks that you can use to get over get over that

00:10:11.740 barrier so for example in the example of a kayak roll um you're going to have to coordinate your your

00:10:20.620 the hip movement of uh that you're making with the arm movement with the with the paddle to sort of

00:10:26.220 flip the boat back up and but if you understand that that you can transmit you're going to transmit

00:10:32.700 that hip movement through your knees and and your legs you you've actually got a kind of an advantage

00:10:40.300 of somebody who really isn't quite sure what they're supposed to be doing uh and you give one of the

00:10:44.540 examples you give in the book that has a rub pat barrier that i'm familiar with is you talk about the

00:10:49.100 bench press is a skill yeah and the counterintuitive thing there is you think when you bench press all

00:10:54.940 you're doing is just going up you're just pressing the bar up yeah but really if you want to do make

00:10:59.900 the lift more efficient you have to press up and back yeah and like going backwards is very

00:11:04.780 counterintuitive for people that's true i mean the bench press is a brilliant micro mastery because

00:11:09.260 at first it does look really like it's just a really simple thing but actually there's a lot of skill

00:11:13.180 and coordination involved so and it's a very satisfying one because obviously you can boast

00:11:18.460 to people how many pounds you're lifting right no and i like see i've been you know lifting weights

00:11:23.660 for several years now and i'm still messing with it because like i'm still getting over that rub pat

00:11:29.740 barrier of pushing the bar back because you just want to your body just wants to go up yeah but you

00:11:34.460 need to press it back the one that gets really what's similar to that is the just the shoulder press

00:11:38.540 yeah or you just you're standing and you're just pressing it up like you have to press the thing

00:11:42.980 backwards like you have to like pretend like you're going to throw the bar back behind you

00:11:46.160 and you don't want to do that because you feel like well if i do that like i'm going to lose control but

00:11:50.200 as soon as you do the bar just goes up so much easier it's a that's a tip that's worth listening

00:11:55.320 to this podcast alone for that one right but see that but like that's like it's because what you're

00:12:00.320 doing when you do that is you're you're keeping the bar over this your center of gravity exactly yes

00:12:05.200 because you kind of that's why machines are actually not very as you know you know machines

00:12:10.840 are just an inferior way of exercising because you're you're conforming yourself to the to

00:12:14.900 demands of the machine rather than you know the most efficient way to lift that weight well let's

00:12:20.180 talk about this payoff thing because i think that's an important that's an important thing you hit

00:12:22.740 throughout the book and you've already talked about it um when you were writing about it made me

00:12:26.900 think when i was a kid and i was i got into magic yeah and the thing that like helped you know

00:12:32.400 make become magic like an obsession for me is i learned that one really easy trick and i was able

00:12:38.100 to impress my parents and they're like oh that's really cool and that made me want to do it more

00:12:42.380 and you know what worked for you as a kid that's still that's still an effect today people want to

00:12:46.940 feel you know get recognition for acquiring new skills it's true i mean because i mean often that's the

00:12:54.520 reason why people sign up for courses and go along to organized learning environments because

00:13:01.100 they're going to get that kind of attention from the teacher and the teacher will give them a pat on

00:13:05.240 the back and probably the other students will if they if they achieve better than the average grade

00:13:11.140 but it's much easier to just find things and identify the payoff um without having to go through

00:13:18.220 the rigmarole of doing a course in it so um the magic trick is perfect for that because you know of

00:13:24.780 course it's all about that that payoff and then in the book i talk about the three card trick which is a

00:13:29.660 very simple con game but also it works as a magic trick and you can you can show that to people and

00:13:36.200 learn that quite quickly and it's something you can do when you say i know a magic trick though or i'm

00:13:40.780 studying magic people are always gonna ask what can you do exactly they're not gonna say uh and you

00:13:46.020 tell them oh well i haven't learned any tricks yet explain to me the theory of of magic and the

00:13:52.080 psychology exactly show me something so you you argue that there's micro masteries in everything

00:13:58.120 cooking weight lifting you can usually find them yeah so how do you find them well i i set myself

00:14:04.380 the challenge of in the book actually of saying you know subjects i had no interest in were lawn care

00:14:09.760 and international law and i i thought okay now where's the challenge where's the micro mastery and

00:14:16.100 so i i what you do to find it you have to find where where's the fun in the subject for you

00:14:22.820 where's the exciting element for you and then you kind of break it down so for me i thought about

00:14:27.180 you know when you when you when i was a kid people had these um uh i mean in the uk cricket pitches

00:14:34.480 that need to be rolled really flat and um and often as a punishment all the boys were uh given this this

00:14:41.760 task of rolling it flat but it wasn't really a punch we really enjoyed doing it because it's a

00:14:45.680 really heavy machine this roller thing so so i i thought okay then that would be the micro mastery would

00:14:51.560 be to would be to start around getting your lawn really flat and uh rolling and so it sort of

00:14:56.780 started it starts from there so look for where the fun in something is and then kind of build out from

00:15:03.020 there and usually that's where you can identify where it is other ways are just simply ask an expert in

00:15:10.080 that field so for example in carpentry i asked this guy who's a top cabinet maker i know and he said

00:15:15.980 make a perfect cube of wood because it's actually a really difficult thing to do because as soon as

00:15:20.900 you cut one bits off one side it's not a perfect cube anymore and the skills you use to make a

00:15:27.220 perfect cube of wood are all the skills that you need for being a good carpenter well let's talk about

00:15:33.180 you know it's talking to experts because that can lead you astray because oftentimes experts their their

00:15:38.920 knowledge is tacit like they don't they just know it and they have a hard time explaining it because they

00:15:44.120 have the curse of knowledge so i mean that's that that's true and so so sometimes you have to

00:15:49.340 approach it a bit sideways and but if you explain what i found is i explained the micro mastery concept

00:15:54.940 to an expert they usually dig one out so i was explaining one to a sculptor and he said make a skull

00:16:01.200 out of clay don't try and sculpt a head just make a skull and then try and make a funny skull or a

00:16:08.240 sad skull and so he had identified a micro mastery for sculpture so if you have an expert at your

00:16:15.060 disposal you can usually explain the micro mastery idea and they will dig into their knowledge and find

00:16:21.260 one for you but you're absolutely right there is a tacit element of you know this they they don't

00:16:26.840 really know what they're doing but well they're not very good at explaining it and you can see that if

00:16:31.300 you go online for something like omelet making there were certain you know gordon ramsay making an

00:16:35.340 omelet it's it's not very uh it first of all he breaks the omelets as well it's not a great omelet

00:16:41.560 you have to you have to poke around to find the right people so so it i think of it as like a

00:16:47.720 network of things it's not just experts it's you read about it you look for hints online you have to

00:16:52.960 be have to be a bit of a researcher and and you know things that catch your your eye or or going back

00:17:00.620 into you know things you thought were cool as a kid often that can be a very good starting point

00:17:05.680 we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show okay so

00:17:11.700 learning a micro mastery skill can be a way into exploring a wider field but they're also completing

00:17:17.200 themselves they're pleasuring themselves so that it can be the the only skill you learn in that field

00:17:22.040 even then though they motivate you to keep learning skills in other fields but why should people even

00:17:28.380 take this continual learning approach in life like why learn a bunch of different disparate skills that

00:17:33.380 aren't connected like well why learn how to do the kayak roll or throw fastball or to do the perfect

00:17:39.200 bench press and what's the purpose of that humans are learning machines and we are we are happy learning

00:17:46.840 even though school is trying to just beat that out of us it is actually something we're really we're

00:17:51.540 meant to do and and lots of things are actually disguised learning experiences so you know when you go to a new

00:17:56.660 city and you're walking around you're actually learning all the time you about what that city is

00:18:00.460 like so i mean things like confidence what is a confident person a confident person is someone who

00:18:06.640 isn't scared to have a go but they know they're not scared to have a go because they know they can learn

00:18:12.300 it they have confidence in their learning ability a lot of people who are not confident simply think

00:18:16.480 they can't learn things and they keep sticking to to what they know or the the limited amount of

00:18:21.000 things they know so and there's definitely true that the more you learn the better you become at it

00:18:27.460 and the more learning tactics you have the better you become at it so there's a kind of you know there's

00:18:33.520 a a functional reason for for learning stuff which is that the better you are at learning the better

00:18:39.340 you are at living but also it's it's good to give yourself permission to be interested in anything i think

00:18:45.940 we live in a world where we're bombarded by so much information for the first time in history we're

00:18:51.600 in we're in a world where information is actually kind of toxic we we're turning it off you know we're

00:18:56.580 saying no rather than yes and i don't think that's a natural human response human response is to see

00:19:02.920 something interesting and want to want to find out about it that's you know for hundreds of thousands

00:19:08.740 of years of evolution you know interesting things meant food they meant something important and we

00:19:15.980 should naturally kind of follow that that kind of way of being i think and so a micro mastery is a way

00:19:22.460 to be satisfy the desire to be interested in you can say yes to something but you don't have to devote

00:19:28.740 your entire life to it it's really it was for me it was about permission to be interested in everything

00:19:33.320 which i think is normal and it's what you like when you're a kid when you're an adult you say oh no no

00:19:37.900 i haven't got time for that no no i can't i can't buy that book oh i can't do that and that's kind

00:19:42.100 of depressing way of living i think right or you're told well you got to specialize in something and

00:19:48.520 make that your thing yeah you know and that becomes everyone i mean it becomes boring i i everyone

00:19:54.100 i mean specializing sounds great because of course it gives you an economic advantage

00:19:58.660 and it and it comes from from from the from the business world really but it's it's migrated into the

00:20:05.260 human world to our detriment i mean every job that is completely specialized is basically boring

00:20:11.500 and and the most interesting jobs that people want things like being a film director or an explorer

00:20:16.600 jobs that are actually polymathic they have loads of different elements well yeah i mean yeah you look

00:20:22.700 back you know maybe even a hundred years ago 150 like if you were a farmer like you had to know a

00:20:28.000 whole bunch of different things to do your job that's true and i think that it is um it's not a

00:20:37.380 great thing you know more and more jobs are actually sitting as we are now staring at a computer screen

00:20:42.720 and that's uh that's not a great way to to spend your time you know if it's it's it's if it's the bulk

00:20:49.420 of your time so it's you have to do something extra and i think that that micro mastery maybe supplies that

00:20:55.560 kind of extra element i mean if you have to earn a living so be it but at least have other elements

00:21:01.540 there yeah i was thinking about my favorite job i mean i might i enjoy my job now but one of my

00:21:06.220 favorite jobs i had when i was right out of high school was i worked at the paint shop at the medical

00:21:12.520 school and we don't not only painted and i learned how to paint like there's a micro mastery there like

00:21:18.180 how to how to paint an edge right like that's that's a skill but then we also like so one day i'd be

00:21:24.140 like laying tile so i learned how to do the mortar right the glue or whatever and there's a skill

00:21:28.960 there that whole job that whole summer i just acquired all these little micro masteries and

00:21:33.740 you'd work on you learn it and then you do the project for you know maybe two or three days and

00:21:38.440 then it was on to something else and i learned how to try to think of the other things yeah yeah it's

00:21:42.760 carpet i learned how to lay carpet cut carpet yeah which was amazing using a knee to kick it kick it

00:21:48.180 yeah and that was i mean it was just it was a lot of fun it was just because i was always learning

00:21:52.540 something like a new discrete skill that i can i can still bust out today like i can still paint

00:21:56.900 an awesome edge an awesome corner yeah exactly and it's it's something that you could that never

00:22:02.800 leaves you that's the the other thing about micro mastery it can't be taken away from you

00:22:06.500 and that's a really good feeling that you've you've got you've got these skills and i i think it's sad

00:22:12.940 that school doesn't really do that so much and um you know you can come out of school having spent

00:22:18.840 you know five years studying french and you can probably only say a few things you know it's

00:22:23.420 it's kind of lamentable really so if you're in a job that's very specialized um learning these

00:22:29.300 varied skills can be something you do in your spare time pursuing these skills besides being satisfying

00:22:35.340 besides being a confidence booster and helping you become more competent and better at life but also

00:22:39.740 it's good for your brain to constantly learn new things as you said like learning new things

00:22:44.940 is normal for human beings and when we once we stop learning new things like our brain actually

00:22:51.840 deteriorates yeah i mean cognitive decay evidence of cognitive decay is increasing in in adults

00:23:00.600 because i mean this is research uh i mean i quote some of the leading experts into stroke recovery

00:23:07.560 because i mean stroke how people recover from a stroke is is measurable and it's it shows the

00:23:15.240 ability of the brain to continually grow even in old age we were a lot of people grew up with the

00:23:24.060 notion that the brain was you know the brain an erroneous notion that the brain had a sort of set number

00:23:28.600 of cells and you know once you'd learn your basic stuff it didn't really grow anymore we now know the

00:23:34.340 brain is constantly adapting the plastic brain is that is the new model and you have to keep learning

00:23:40.680 it's learn it or lose it and so that's that in itself is an incentive and often when i talk about

00:23:46.140 micromastery and the audience is a bit older this is the time when they suddenly start paying attention

00:23:50.540 because just doing the crossword puzzle isn't isn't really enough there's a lot of evidence you

00:23:55.740 actually have to you do have to learn stuff as you get older and you have to if you don't learn it

00:24:01.420 the neurotransmitters associated with learning are gradually decrease and so you actually become

00:24:07.880 unable to learn anything i mean i i watched a tv program where they had this elderly elderly he was

00:24:13.460 a football team manager and he he was having to learn french and he just just couldn't hold it in

00:24:18.080 his head he just he'd obviously hadn't done any learning he was good at managing a football team but

00:24:22.960 he hadn't done any learning for 40 years he just couldn't do it so but the good news is starting

00:24:28.340 small doing a little bit every day you build up that neurotransmitter you build up the ability

00:24:34.260 to learn so that is um a definite health benefit so yeah there's a case for just you're dabbling in

00:24:41.320 different things and not feeling bad because i think that's another thing people are afraid

00:24:44.360 to be a dabbler because you know then you're like you're a deletante it's like well you can't stick

00:24:49.460 with anything but the micromastery concepts like well i don't have to stick with i learned this

00:24:53.120 discrete skill yeah and that's all i need and if that's all i want to learn that's okay

00:24:56.920 that's it and you've got something that that you can um you know it's a bit like a party piece it's

00:25:03.400 kind of complete in itself it doesn't really need you to do anymore you know the fact that you can

00:25:09.760 you know get on get on the surfboard stand up on that surfboard and surf a wave that's enough you

00:25:15.120 don't have to then devote your entire life to it or even a greater part of your life yeah like i can

00:25:21.100 stack a great stack of wood that's all that's a discrete skill that's all very useful very useful

00:25:26.160 flipping a pancake i think is a micromastery totally that that that sorts out the men from

00:25:31.800 the boys definitely the people who who go for it and the others who kind of mess it up and it ends

00:25:37.160 up on the on the taps or the on the stove yeah oh you have in here like splitting a log is another one

00:25:43.080 um which yeah there's a skill to it there's a trick and once you learn the trick or even like

00:25:48.000 yeah splitting a log like i've what was the thing there is you you want to let the the mall do all

00:25:55.120 the work oftentimes people want to just swing as hard as they can that's not the trick yeah yeah i

00:26:00.060 mean if you're right and if you see people who like native native people often women chopping wood

00:26:05.880 the the axe or the machete does all the work they're just letting it drop really and but the other one

00:26:13.440 i love it because i put this in the book is the is it's a skill that's actually gone because everyone

00:26:17.920 has chainsaws but the actual chopping a log in half rather than splitting it and if you watch and

00:26:24.580 often in movies they get this wrong the the you just they just sort of like viciously go at a kind

00:26:30.180 of v at the in the log and of course eventually you have to start chopping at each side to widen the v

00:26:37.080 whereas the correct way is you you make two two two cuts that are the width of the log apart and then

00:26:44.280 and then you kind of angle the axe so that chip just flies out you you actually get rid of a big lump of

00:26:49.380 wood and um it's it's it's miles faster and that is that is the traditional correct way of chopping a log

00:26:56.500 so that's the kind of skill that really impresses people it does impress people you had the section

00:27:01.900 about how the punk rock scene like in the 70s and 80s can teach us something about micro mastery

00:27:09.020 so i was like in the 90s i was like a punk rocker like what the punk like as punk rock you could be

00:27:16.360 in like suburban oklahoma which is probably not very punk rock but um there is an ethos there that i think

00:27:22.700 does apply to this micro mastery concept definitely it's it's the have a go ethos you know basically in

00:27:30.380 the 70s you know the music had been become really bloated and you had these huge super groups and

00:27:35.540 then suddenly a whole bunch of guys in garages said oh well we we can't even play instruments but we want

00:27:40.960 to be we want to be pop stars so they would construct them with the simplest kind of songs and and even i

00:27:47.600 i read the other day sid vicious the reason he started his pogo dancing is he couldn't dance

00:27:52.000 so he just in frustration just started jumping up and down and invented a new dance so it's that

00:27:57.860 willing is to have a go and punk uh rockers you know they may they did their own recording they

00:28:04.020 often set up their own record companies they had their own fanzines they were they were willing to

00:28:08.700 do have a go everything and and it and it took over and created a whole movement in music that

00:28:15.540 eventually the conventional record companies got on board with and the the an interesting modern day

00:28:22.880 example is the i don't know if you have this bit craft beer in america but in uk it's huge it's

00:28:27.960 called brew dog and the the founder of brew dog actually wrote a book called calling his book

00:28:34.720 a punk businessman because he he um he'd grown up with punk rock and that idea of doing everything

00:28:39.820 in his case brewing the beer in his garage when he started doing the marketing going out to the

00:28:45.240 get the money from the bank bottling it all of these things he was willing to have a go at he

00:28:50.620 wasn't he wasn't trying to outsource it to specialists and that gave him a much bigger

00:28:54.600 control and and a much bigger um ability to do it cheaply because i mean the moment you start

00:29:02.200 asking experts to do things for you you're just going to be writing checks left right and center

00:29:06.560 right now that was the like that's what i one thing that i enjoyed about that the punk rock scene

00:29:11.940 was you know if you wanted to do a show well it's like you run it out in american legion hall

00:29:17.140 and you made your own crappy flyers at kinko's yeah you handed them out and then you made your

00:29:23.620 own cassette tapes that you know didn't sound great but like you just did it like you weren't

00:29:28.220 afraid to put it out there you just yeah as you said give it a go and i i like that a lot why did

00:29:33.000 you give up in the end i think i just outgrew it like i mean i i was never like in a punk band i

00:29:38.720 just went to the shows and listened i i think i outgrew i mean i still i still carry that ethos with

00:29:44.540 me i'm just like i'm just gonna do this i'm gonna give it a go but i mean what's crazy too is it's

00:29:48.860 i think things are a lot easier now to give it a go but you're you're right it it is actually never

00:29:54.800 been easier to do to do a lot of these things and you have like youtube videos that could show you

00:29:58.700 how to do things like yeah i mean you didn't have that 20 30 years ago yeah it was really difficult

00:30:03.840 even fixing my i mean i fixed my car the other day replacing some broken taillights i would never

00:30:09.280 have done that in the past because it did involve removing a couple of you know bumper panels in the

00:30:14.480 right order but the video you know six minute video on youtube ordered the parts on ebay for you

00:30:19.880 know minimal sum saved myself probably two or three hundred dollars so it's a it's you know it's

00:30:26.840 fantastic in a way so yeah i think the the the idea there we think we started talking about

00:30:30.580 start talking about punk rockers it's like just don't be afraid to give it a try and just just go

00:30:36.380 for it and it might you might you might mess up a lot in the beginning it might be terrible but

00:30:41.100 if you find that micro mastery skill in that thing you want to learn because it's repeatable

00:30:46.840 because it's self-contained you can easily master it yeah i mean it's uh it's a painless way of uh

00:30:53.800 approaching something and i think that i've mentioned this before we now go through life with

00:30:58.780 these kind of our mindset to know like when you're walking down a crowded an empty street

00:31:03.240 a crowded street you you basically not open because if you were you know panhandlers or you

00:31:09.080 know people might get in your way or whatever so you're more or less saying no to to life but of

00:31:13.860 course that isn't the normal human response normally we we're supposed to be open and interested in

00:31:20.200 things so this is a way of of getting around that kind of no barrier that we've had to erect around

00:31:25.720 ourselves to get through life so we've been talking about micro masteries in the abstract why they're

00:31:31.460 great and why you should develop them and the benefits of it but can you can you walk us through

00:31:35.200 like a micro mastery um that you've enjoyed that can give us a taste of what we're talking about here

00:31:40.820 um yeah i mean the the first one which is which i've spoken about several times which is the omelet

00:31:49.440 making is i think it's it's satisfying because because it's such an easy thing to do and the entry trick

00:31:57.100 which i picked up from a french cook was uh if you want to immediately make the omelets fluffier which

00:32:05.460 will get a response and and this isn't the classical way to make an omelet but it is a way to to

00:32:10.880 immediately get that payback is to separate out the egg white and the egg yolk and beat that white a lot

00:32:18.160 and then recombine them later you will get a much much fluffier omelet so immediately you've got this

00:32:24.560 entry trick skill and the acknowledgement that when you're making a an omelet in the past i would just

00:32:34.880 sort of put them straight into the pan i didn't realize that the the the whole kind of rub pat barrier

00:32:40.100 if you like in making omelets is that is to do with the heat of the the heat of the pan

00:32:46.740 and how much you kind of agitate the omelet mix because in in fact an omelet is actually closer

00:32:52.460 to scrambled eggs than people think they think it's more like a pancake but it really if you've

00:32:56.320 got the model of kind of scrambled eggs in your mind that's that's kind of closer so the simple

00:33:01.220 way around that that barrier is don't mess around with the the gas control on the oven just lift the

00:33:07.940 pan up and down you know and learn how to control the heat in the pan by just the distance it is from

00:33:12.340 the flames so it's another very very simple kind of trick that enables you to get around that problem

00:33:18.520 of of you know the the correct heat of the of the of what the pan should be and there are all sorts of

00:33:25.980 you know like the classical way to make an omelet is to use a fork which at first seems like you know

00:33:30.540 people you know use you know spatulas and so on but a fork is a really good piece of of equipment for

00:33:36.620 cooking an omelet because you can you can keep agitating the the mix in the pan and that builds

00:33:44.080 it up and makes it much fluffier and then when it comes to tipping it out you can use the the fork to

00:33:49.480 gradually roll up the omelet because in the classical omelet you roll it up when you dump it out and

00:33:55.460 another entry trick which which uh which isn't so widely known is that it's almost impossible to

00:34:01.500 undercook an omelet but it's it's it's very very and this is why it's a test piece it's very very easy

00:34:07.000 to overcook one and just make it like rubber so once you know that it's always much better to

00:34:12.300 err on the side of undercooking and um because once you've rolled that omelet up it often it will keep

00:34:18.980 cooking so you don't really need to worry so you know with that information you should uh should be

00:34:25.800 able to cook some pretty pretty good omelets right but but you said that like you know even though

00:34:32.440 you've got those entry tricks down like you're still tweaking with it you're still experimenting

00:34:36.280 with it like it's not it doesn't stop it can stop there if you want but it doesn't necessarily have

00:34:41.200 to it doesn't because because you're you're kind of interested in the process and you want to you

00:34:47.740 want to improve you know you um you want to um experiment i think that's a sort of natural

00:34:53.800 natural human thing to want to do and this is all what i think this micro mastery concept does is

00:35:00.560 you're learning how to learn again which is becoming a skill that is essential in today's

00:35:07.140 world where you know skills are constantly upgrading and changing so like what you were able to do to get

00:35:13.880 ahead in life or make a living you know is might not be relevant 10 15 years from now so you have to

00:35:20.180 know how to learn and this micro mastery concept is a way to to learn how to learn yeah exactly and um

00:35:27.380 yeah it's absolutely true i mean in my own uh career i i earned money as a journalist and uh you know

00:35:34.760 pretty good money as freelance journalist that's pretty much dried up um obviously there are a few

00:35:40.300 magazines and newspapers that are still going but vast amounts of that revenue now goes to facebook

00:35:46.300 so you know that people people who are journalists have got to learn something new and if you're not

00:35:51.100 prepared to learn something new well you're not going to you're not going to earn a living right

00:35:55.060 well robert where can people go to learn more about the book in your work

00:35:58.580 so yeah i mean the books on amazon in fact most of my books are on amazon so you can get in there or

00:36:08.240 from barnes and noble uh those websites and i also have a website which is a a blog and it has a

00:36:16.740 a lot of articles it probably has nearly a thousand articles on it um and that's robert twigger.com

00:36:24.020 so that's covers a whole range of of subjects but uh yeah you can dig around in there and there's

00:36:30.340 there's more on micro mastery there's more on some of the traveling i've done and various other things i've

00:36:35.480 i've been involved in well fantastic robert twigger thanks for your time i'm gonna go i'm gonna go

00:36:39.480 make an omelet now cheers thank you thank you for having me thank you my guest today was robert

00:36:46.880 twigger he's the author of the book micro mastery it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere

00:36:51.340 you can find out more information about his work at his website robert twigger it's twigger with

00:36:55.560 two g's.com also check out our show notes aom.is slash micro mastery where you can find links to

00:37:00.900 resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:37:05.480 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast check out our podcast archives

00:37:14.840 at artofmanliness.com there's over 500 episodes there and while you're there check out our platform

00:37:19.980 called the strenuous life it's an online platform that we created help you put into action the things

00:37:24.160 we've been talking about on the podcast and one thing we do there in the art of manliness help you

00:37:28.400 develop different skill sets kind of ties in nicely with this micro mastery podcast so if that

00:37:32.820 intrigues you you want to put into action check out the strenuous life we've created 50 different

00:37:36.920 badges based around 50 different skills where we create little micro masteries to help keep you

00:37:41.760 motivated to learn more about that field so check it out strenuouslife.co we got enrollment coming up

00:37:46.860 in september and if you'd like to enjoy ad free episodes of the art of manliness podcast you can do

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00:38:24.300 this is brett mckay reminding not only listen to the a1 podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#528： Become a More Competent Human Through Micromastery

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