Steps towards Technical Mastery

How do you know if you've become a Master in your field?

Is there any method to learn things quickly in any field?
How do you avoid stagnation and mediocrity after becoming competent in your field?
How do you become a Master?

Take software for example: How do you become a Master in it?

These are exactly the questions which have been pushing me to seek answers.
Well now that I've got some kind of grip on this quest I'm able to give some of the answers.
Or at the very least point the way.

Short Answer: You'll know it when you get there!!
Long Answer: You'll see the Sign-Posts as you move towards achieving Mastery. Read on for the gory details.


If you look around you'll see that every profession or hobby has its levels of competence:
Sport: Club-side, Regional, National, Olympian
Writing:  Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Master.
Martial-Arts:  White-Belt, Brown-Belt, Black-Belt
Other Fields: Other classifications


The key is to know where you are and how to get to your goal.

Levels of Competence:  These levels seem to hold true for learning any craft.

• Beginner          -  Unconscious + Incompetent,
• Intermediate  -       Conscious + Incompetent,
• Advanced     -         Conscious +   Competent,
• Master         -     Unconscious +   Competent

Thanks to Bob Bly's post: 
The 4 levels of Marketing Competence where he talks about the same things applied in Marketing.


It's interesting to note that a master grows from Unconsciously Incompetent to Unconsciously Competent.
His insight becomes as unconscious as the beginner's lack of "sight". It has become a part of his nature.

Software:
The Software Industry too (like other arts and industries) is recognizing these levels:
Apprentice, Journeyman, Master-Craftsman.

Critical Steps to Mastery:
The book, Apprenticeship Patterns - Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman,
talks about the path from Apprentice to Journey-Man, the most critical stage in your path to Mastery.
Written in simple and conversational style it does 2 important things:

1. Describes this journey from Apprentice to Journey-Man and,
2. Collects the real-life pragmatic Experience into Learning Patterns. 

Applying the Patterns At Work And Play:
These Patterns are meant to guide people from beginner to higher levels.
This book uses a general learning-based approach and gives advice on usage of the Patterns.

Combinations of Patterns:
To take a non-software example:
In Chess the real value of patterns lies in using them in combinations.
To play at a Grand-Master level you first need to know:

• Basics - Rules, dos and don't s.
• Openings - individual patterns which help to bring all the pieces into play for both attack and defense.
• Middle-Game - use combinations of Patterns to get a controlling position for the final assault e.g. Outposts, Forks and Pinned-Pieces
• End-Game - finish the game in attack or defense

Similarly Apprenticeship Patterns shows how you can integrate different learning patterns into powerful combinations which double-triple the impact when used individually.

How and Why this approach works:
The Principle of 3-D vision,  says that you get 2 slightly different views of the same object from your eyes. Your brain then uses these different views to generate a perception of depth i.e. 3-D Vision.

Like the distance between our Eyes - the key intention being - to increase the variety of feedback on the subject. The ideal approach would be to use a "3D Scanner" i.e. view the different facets of the subject by incrementally sampling it from slightly different angles. These pictures from Wikipedia illustrate the analogy.

Doing this however takes lots of time and effort. So a more pragmatic approach is to get enough resolution as required. Filling in the gaps can be done as and when required. Essentially this can give you a High-Definition 3D Vision - a must to achieve Mastery in your field.

Basically, you can use these Learning Patterns to setup things so as to get many slightly different angles on the same subject.
Come to think about it this must be what is known as the in-depth insight of a Master.
Where he sees the multi-faceted nature of the subject and intuitive ability to choose the best path from an infinity of possible ways.

See Also:
0) The Podcast that started it all SE-Radio Podcast Interview with Bob Martin on Software Craftsmanship
1) You can read the online version of Apprenticeship Patterns here -> Click Here. 
You can interact with other readers and the authors by leaving your comments on the website.
You need to register there to get a user-name for your comments.
2) You can view my book review for Apprenticeship Patterns here -> Click Here
3) It's a long road to mastery and most of us are still at the Apprentice/Journey-Man level.
    To know more about the higher aspects of craftsmanship see the book:
Software Craftsmanship:The New Imperative by Pete McBreen.
4) Found this article in my bookmarks on Patterns of Learning by Douglas E. Schmidt which got me started on the chess analogy.
5) Thanks to Wikipedia for the pictures on 3D scanning and great wiki on 3D Scanner technology here.

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