The Inverted Mastery Cycle and the Money Making Fallacy

The Inverted Mastery Cycle

The Inverted Mastery CycleIf you couldn’t tell from the last few blog posts, I think that some of our young people, in regards to career, have lost their way.  There is a new emphasis on rampant career speculation instead of career investment.  Everyone wants their own perpetual money machine, yet few have the fortitude to build it.  Building up to financial independence requires time, sweat, and tears.  And it also requires mastery.  Mastery over our finances as well as mastery over our careers.  Yet to reach these heights, one must pass through the novice, intermediary, and even competent phases first.  Today, however, everyone wants to begin performing at the highest level.  I call this the inverted mastery cycle.

You can’t reach the top of your game without years of practice.

Why should your finances or income be any different?

Apprenticeship

In medicine, like many age-old professions, becoming a master requires an apprenticeship.  There is no inverted mastery cycle option.  You cannot start doling out medicine on day one.  Instead, there is a drawn out, soul crushing path that must be traveled at a snail’s pace.

Heck, for the first two years, you are buried in books and not patients.  Third and fourth year of medical school are a prolonged clinical introduction with much time spent watching with your hands tightly restrained behind your back.  And then residency, the crowning achievement that may last up to 8 years, is the true trial by fire.

The first year student can’t jump into clinical.  The third year student is not ready to have a resident’s schedule.  There is an ordered pathway of ever-increasing responsibilities that prepares the traveler before embarking on the next more difficult path.

Scut

Scut.  The term used in medicine to describe the busy work and dirty jobs that are handed off to the most junior trainees.  These are the dreaded parts of any work place.  They often are heavy in physical labor or, in medicine, deeply involved with the more disgusting aspects of medical care.  The term disempaction comes to mind.

Part of the natural progression that is bastardized in the inverted mastery cycle, the dreaded scut work of any apprenticeship is not only where the beginner pays their dues, but also an integral part of learning the basics of any profession.

Of course, it’s no fun running lab samples all over the hospital, but how else does the third year medical student learn where the pathology department is?

The Inverted Mastery Cycle

The Money Making Fallacy

There is a great push by today’s youth to forego the apprenticeship and concentrate on lifestyle first.  Although no less interested in reaching financial freedom, the idea of grinding it out for prolonged periods of time to reach mastery and the high salary and career options that come with it, is anathema.

Thus the get rich quick schemes like building a blog to capitalize in six months and the overnight internet heroes are born.  The problem, however, is there is very little accrued knowledge or skill.  There is no history of doing the scut in order to understand the process soup to nuts.  Instead, we rely overly much on the inverted mastery cycle.

We want all the knowledge, ability, and money-making prowess.

And we want it right out of college fit snuggly into forty-hour work weeks with a cushy vacation schedule and sabbaticals.

The Inverted Mastery Cycle

Mastery Comes at a Price

There is no other way to attain mastery but to pay for it. This payment usually comes in the form of years of learning, practice, and even doing scut.  There are few viable short cuts, no matter what the last podcast told you.

The inverted mastery cycle is a myth.

Most of us had to master the eighty-hour work week before we could whittle down to the four-hour work week.

That’s not saying that the four-hour work week is impossible.

But your much more likely to get there if you have put the time and energy into mastery before shooting for the stars.

 

Doc G

A doctor who discovered the FI community but still struggling with RE.

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18 Responses

  1. When your young you work hard and you believe working harder is the key. When you have experience you have the knowledge. Applied correctly you are more efficient at using your time. That efficiency or productivity is what leads to higher pay.

  2. E says:

    I believe that our fast paced world is in complete opposition to what is needed to work towards mastery. Maybe mastery is not fully appreciated. We tend to want the shortcuts. Want things in an instant with one click .Mastery is the road less travelled. It’s not a short cut. But for all the hard work, patience, experiences and perseverance. It’s the gift from the process.

  3. xrayvsn says:

    Ahh. Being the scut monkey. I remember those days all to well. You took your lumps but then you started learning by osmosis to supplement the book learning and it made you better for it.

    We are a fast food society now and want everything instantly. It just doesn’t work like that in the medical field.

  4. Dr. McFrugal says:

    There has been talk and much debate lately regarding whether the decision to go into medicine is financially sound. With rising costs of medical school, high student loan burdens, and decreasing compensation for physicians, its easy to see why the is debatable.

    With this in mind… is a person going into medicine these day undergoing “career speculation”? or is it still an investment?

    • Doc G says:

      I think it is still an investment. You are investing in a skill set as well as training in complex thought. Physicians of tomorrow will always be able to use their skills in high level non practicing positions in management and business even if they decide not to practice.

  5. I believe there are some careers that are not as geared toward mastery. For me, I was originally an electronic engineer. At a small company, in a pinch to tackle a short deadline, I switched to writing software. I literally learned on the job right then and there, and we did ship the product. Over the years, I kept finding the software languages and operating systems changing and having to start over again and again with the latest thing. Just before I quit my job, there were young millennial whippersnappers grabbing the mouse out of my hand, pushing me aside, and showing me what they just learned that I was going to have to catch up with yet again. However, when we got to an area like troubleshooting, or design, or dealing with the customer, they were clueless. It just depends.

    I would say that in today’s high tech world, there really are a lot of jobs that are here today and gone tomorrow. The only real mastery is learning how to learn.

  6. Gasem says:

    This also points out a shelf life on knowledge. They call medicine a practice for a reason. When you quit even though quite accomplished unless you engage it will soon pass you buy. This also is true for post practice. As a retiree whether early or normal you also start out as a novice. The presumption of knowing the pitfalls is just a presumption. 4 x25 is a presumption, having enough is a presumption, because nobody knows the real future constraints, just the narrative. It’s all a projection. As you become accomplished in the living in retirement you will become journeyman and master as well. Many moving parts need to be attended. Hopefully there will be something left to master if you goof it up as a novice.

    If you get out of your biz too early you will become unemployable. Your salable knowledge will be stale and/or entry level. People hire people for production not self discovery. Production come with successful time in, not time on the beach. Once you’re on the beach for a couple years dishwasher will start looking good because the energy hump to re-enter something complex will be too high.

  7. I notice that that a lot of the young folks we hire feel they deserve to get promoted in their first or second year. They do work hard but they need to understand that it doesn’t work that way

  8. Ms. Fiology says:

    Great, great post. I love this line, “There is no other way to attain mastery but to pay for it. This payment usually comes in the form of years of learning, practice, and even doing scut. ”

    Yeah, any of the great things I’ve achieved in my life have come from putting in the hard work.

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