Micromastery summary

First, every micromastery involves an entry trick, which is a cunning scheme that speeds up your performance and pays off immediately. To illustrate this, let’s consider the act of balancing stones on top of each other. The entry trick in this case would be to find stones that have three raised bumps in close proximity, in the shape of a triangle. These three bumps will create a small platform that another stone can easily fit on top of and stay in place.

Second, micromasteries each have a rub-pat barrier, which is the obstacle that arises when two required skills are incongruent with each other. The name of this element comes from the game of simultaneously rubbing your stomach and patting your head. If you try it out yourself, you’ll see that it’s often difficult to do on the first attempt, hence the barrier.

Have you ever tried to learn an exciting, impressive skill only to end up throwing in the towel halfway through?

Experiences like that illustrate why there has to be a payoff that will encourage you to keep putting in effort. If you feel like you’re getting better at something, that feeling of success will make you want to continue.

Ever thought about taking up surfing? Well, here’s a rundown on how you can micromaster this sport.

First, the entry trick associated with surfing is a dry-run practice of jumping up from a lying position to a standing one. This involves lying face-down on the ground and then springing up immediately to stand on your feet.

If you don’t feel like learning how to surf – or don’t have access to a beach – why not try to micromaster baking artisan bread? To illustrate just how handy entry tricks are to jump-starting the micromastery of any skill, here are three examples related to baking bread.

The first entry trick is dedicating a whole day to breadmaking. Baking is a lengthy process, and a lack of time will surely throw off your bread game. Therefore, you need to make sure you allocate enough hours to prepare not only for the baking time, but also for preparing the dough. You don’t want to cut any corners as the results won’t be nearly as good.

After the entry trick, there are five more steps involved in micromastering baking bread.

The next step is the rub-pat barrier. In this case, it involves balancing temperature and time during proving, which refers to when the dough rises due to the addition of yeast before being put in the oven.