Fundamental Mastery
Published on: March 8, 2025
Have you ever wondered what distinguishes a novice from a master?
It doesn’t matter in which domain.
If you’ve heard about the 10,000 hours rule, then that’s probably the first thing that came to your mind — the amount of time invested in some activity.
In general, of course, mastery somehow depends on the amount of time, but unfortunately, there are often scenarios where a specialist has worked in some field for a third of their life, but can only be called a master mainly due to years of service.
No, it’s wrong to measure mastery by time, because pants can be worn out reading comics, or more recently — doom-scrolling through reels. We shouldn’t forget that experience can be artificially inflated, which is trendy nowadays and not very condemned due to the broken hiring process.
So, mastery as a quality extends to any areas of any practice, engineering, mixed, and even entirely creative-humanitarian.
It turns out that mastery can only be achieved through some “qualitative” investment of time. What is this “quality” here, and how do we understand that time is being spent qualitatively?
This quality is reflected in the results of work, and results are achieved through composure at the moment of planning work and engaging in it.
What is composure?
Personally for me, composure resonates with the vague word mindfulness.
But if we break down both by meaning — we end up in roughly the same place.
In very simple terms and on the surface — composure is when I’m concentrated on some task, not distracted by anything, and investing all my mental efforts to complete it.
But digging deeper, it turns out that composure is much more than such mindfulness, attentiveness in the moment. Because the ability to concentrate on a task is achieved through a specific method of concentration that I’ve chosen for myself and that has shown tangible results.
This method itself didn’t take hold immediately, because my first attempts to follow it were somewhat spontaneous.
It doesn’t matter at all which method I’m talking about, because we’re going even deeper down the rabbit hole with you to finally understand the subject.
So, it turns out that without composure, we cannot effectively plan work, build a model by which this work should be performed. Without composure, we often aren’t even able to understand what needs to be done, what the task entails — if, for example, we’re given a vague assignment, which often happens — without the ability to be/become composed, we won’t be able to sequentially determine answers to all the emerged questions, instead falling into the vacuum of “what am I supposed to do anyway?!”
It’s also surprising that composure turns out to be both a completely practical skill and completely scale-free, in terms of the context of possible application.
What I mean is that composure is also applicable both at the level of evaluating our individual work (when we analyze how much time and on what we spent, how effective our efforts were), and at the level of team evaluation (comparing planned and actually spent time on various tasks). This same principle extends to the level of a company department in relation to the speed of product release and, ultimately, to the level of the entire company in terms of the pace and volume of generated profit.
It seems that the conversation is heading in the direction of “time,” and that’s okay, because time is our most valuable and main resource. But the “feeling” of time itself (without measuring its real spending) is not very practical and tends to simply slip through our fingers.
So, to achieve mastery in anything, we need to develop composure.
Just like that — quite specifically. Composure.
Not just consuming some popular time-management techniques and trying to force them on ourselves because “some guy explained it in a short video, and the guy is smart and successful!”, but developing composure, as a skill of directing our attention, consciously directing it to work and strategic planning of this work. And or life in general, if you want. Anything/Everything.
Spiritual people versed in authentic or modern esoteric topics might be tempted to fall into familiar concepts and practices when talking about composure — I urge you to go from the opposite direction, from the most concrete, scientific understanding. Authentic practices will respond back in time anyway, otherwise they wouldn’t be authentic. But it’s better, of course, to start everything with a clean slate, as they say. You can always layer your representations later.
First Principles
What’s great about composure is that we can evaluate any of our activities and the surrounding world through its lens.
Let’s say we started doing something and suddenly realized that from the very beginning, when planning this activity, we were not composed; with high probability, we can conclude that this endeavor can already be considered unsuccessful in terms of effectiveness of moving towards results.
How many things, started at the call of emotions and blind interest, have you started and abandoned after a week with a feeling of complete emptiness?
The opposite, when we start any business through the lens of composure, we cannot designate as “absolutely correct,” but we can say with confidence that such “composed” affairs have a lower risk of going down the wrong path.
Simply because we’ve determined where to go, and finally — “what to do.” This is about rational planning.
Spontaneous, not “mindful” affairs always go haphazardly, in an unclear direction, and most likely don’t lead to anything at all. This is the reason for the well-known “procrastination” which arises when there is no system, no plan.
And any robust system is based on first principles. Something very fundamental.
A first principle is a basic logical conclusion that cannot be derived from any other conclusions or assumptions. In other words — it’s a completely composed and mindful conclusion.
It turns out that composure is the first step, the foundation of intellectual mastery, by developing and possessing which we multiply the chances of succeeding in any activity. So it is not “just a skill.”
Thinking without composure is associative and chaotic. This is the “automatic” thinking familiar to all of us because it’s built on our experience and “default” assumptions, which are not always correct and rational.
Such thinking is only good because it’s not very “labor-intensive,” and therefore so dearly loved by our lazy brains.
On the other hand — thinking that doesn’t go against, but follows first principles will always be aimed at turning the problem inside out, breaking it down as deeply as possible, asking questions that result in quite original assumptions that can be practically tested.
We’ll talk about this thinking more than once, but now I want to emphasize that such thinking without composure is simply impossible, because you need to:
- Generally understand the task/problem.
- Grasp your assumptions. Are they based only on prejudices, personal experience, “that’s how everyone does it”? (Composure comes into play at this stage even more than at the first!)
- Adequately decompose the problem.
- Suggest a solution, evaluate it.
- Model a plan to achieve this solution.
At each stage, everything begins with composure and is infused with it.
How to understand that I am composed?
To rephrase and summarize in conclusion — composure, apparently, is mastery, or at least — the basis of any mastery. Mastery can and should be expressed in measurable metrics (otherwise it’s not mastery, but who knows what).
If mastery exists, we are able to adequately choose a method of organizing our work or the work of our team, company and evaluate the results in qualitative metrics, which I talked about above — how much time and on what was spent, how many tasks were completed, projects finished, money earned/paid, and so on.
Working with composure, it seems that we automatically improve the quality of our life, because we constantly (or at least finally) do things, complete them, and get a dopamine treat.
Therefore, it seems to me that understanding whether we are composed or not is quite simple — let’s look at our life and its conditional “quality.” Is there a lot of regret about things not started or not finished? Is there a lot of fuss that leads to little? Is there a lot of doubt, questions — “what to do anyway.” It seems clear what we want — “money, happiness, health, security,” but in reality — no. All these only seem like concrete goals.
To want something without understanding how to achieve it, without a developed strategy, means to be not composed and not to do anything at all.
It sounds simpler than it is in reality
The words are quite understandable, and the meaning is easy to grasp. Well, composure, well, mastery — okay.
Easy to understand, let go, and forget.
Composure becomes a skill and mastery when attention is maintained at all stages of work — before work, at the moment of work itself, and at the end. And then iteratively in a circle, if necessary.
Before work — this is about composure at the moment of studying the task and consciously highlighting what’s really important, so that from this important stuff, we could assemble a plan-model by which we will work.
At the moment of work itself, composure is needed, firstly, not to be distracted by extraneous things “outside the plan,” and to understand in time that you’ve gone off track or the laid path turned out to be not ideal. We need to understand this in time to make adjustments, not waste time on suboptimal work.
And finally, composure is needed to do something sensible with the results of the work, make final decisions, and set the built process in motion.
With all this, if we’re talking about mastery, it implies that we live through, work through all the above stages with ease!
Otherwise, again — if it’s not so, then it’s not mastery.