As someone who loves trying to learn new things, I’ve always had trouble determining when I’ve “learned” that new thing. While learning something new can be fulfilling, it is rare for there to be that clear lightswitch moment of mastery. It is more often the case that as you progress in a certain domain you begin to find more and more subdomains that you had no prior knowledge of. What started as a simple desire to Learn How to Bake Bread might have you down a rabbit hole of different techniques, gadgets, and baking philosophies. And after picking up some skills the newly enlightened version of you no longer relates to your pre-baking self’s mindset. You’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a beginner making it tougher for you to feel satisfied with how far you’ve come.

Over time as I’ve struggled with this same problem across many different domains or skills I’ve developed a mental framework for where I define my endpoint. I call it Nominal Mastery. I define it as being good enough at a particular skill to be considered reasonably better than the average person, but not necessarily being good enough at that skill to be compensated for it. Becoming a Nominal Master in as many things as possible is something that has become an important part of my life and it gives me the freedom to pursue a wide range of different hobbies while still rewarding me with a strong level of satisfaction for my efforts.

It might help to tell you what Nominal Mastery isn’t. It is not being an Intermediate, nor is it the Slope of Enlightenment that you’ll see on a Dunning-Kruger curve[1]. To me both of those are steps along a development curve where someone is trying to climb as high as they can get. Either of those classifications inherently signal that someone has more progress left to make. Nominal Mastery is the end goal. Another thing I wouldn’t use Nominal Mastery to describe is within someone’s career domain. This is why in my definition of Nominal Mastery was the fact that it’s a skill level in which you wouldn’t expect to be compensated for. I limit the use of Nominal Mastery as a goal for hobbies or side projects. For example, a few things I would consider myself a Nominal Master at are juggling and cooking.

The Outside View

The biggest part of Nominal Mastery is that it will help put whatever skill you’re learning into perspective. Rather than have your expectations shift as you learn more about a skill, Nominal Mastery helps to anchor them to a fixed point – The Outsider’s View. Make no mistake, just because I’m using an outsider’s eye to judge whether or not I’ve reached a certain level of proficiency, does not mean this concept relies on the validation of some faceless population. It’s more to say that there’s many things that look impressive on the surface to an outsider, but to an insider it’s trivial. Think of it like a magician doing card tricks. When you don’t know how the trick is done, you’re going to be impressed by it. The magician can feel good about the reactions they are receiving for their sleight of hand. But if the magician instead does their routine for a group of magicians, their tricks no longer garner the same reaction. The perceived skill level is dependent on the audience.

By using that Outsider’s View, we can allow ourselves to be satisfied with where we stand as we become more familiar with a certain domain. I will never be a chef in a Michelin star restaurant, but I can make a decent smashburger and reverse-sear a steak, so in the eyes of my roommate I’m a great chef. It’s not about what Gordon Ramsey will think of my skills, it’s about what the random people who I meet in my life will think.

Amateurism is Cool

Part of the reason I exclude skills related to one’s career or other passions from Nominal Mastery is due to the amount of commitment growing in those domains requires. As you spend more time on a skill it gets increasingly harder to improve[2]. Climbing up that hill of diminishing returns should only be reserved for those things in which you are most passionate. If I were to apply this strategy of just trying to be better than an Outsider in my career, I don’t think I would be very effective.

Another reason I exclude career-related skills or things you’re hoping to be compensated for from the definition of Nominal Mastery is because it can be very easy to fool yourself that you are of a higher skill range than you really are. Remember in this framework you are typically stopping before you learn about all the other subdomains within this skill. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said in his book Flow – a book you should definitely read – “the moment that amateurs lose sight of the score and use knowledge mainly to bolster their egos or to achieve a material advantage, then they become caricatures” I encourage you to read the full text to get the proper context, but the point I think he is trying to make is that rabid amateurism can be a very fulfilling vocation but once you start to think you’re better than you really are you forfeit any virtue you might gain from it.

There are millions of different topics out there to learn about, at the same time there is a finite number that you have time to learn. I believe in Nominal Mastery’s ability to help you find some additional satisfaction from the things you choose to fill your time with, but I recognize that it might not be for everyone. My take: Learn. Learn as much as you can. Nothing in this life is too trivial that it’s not worth spending some time with. Whether you decide to go as deep as possible in a few things or to touch on many things, is ultimately your decision. But if you find yourself not recognizing your own growth, give the Nominal Mastery framework a try.

If you made it this far I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to me at mthartz25@gmail.com or any other way you know.

Footnotes

[1] Slope of Enlightenment: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_Effect_01.svg

[2] I don’t believe growth is linear but I’m going to ignore that for the purposes of this article