The Inverted Mastery Cycle

If 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 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.

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.