A Mason's Work

From a practical behavior perspective, the master mason's apron or perspective or kind

of roll can be evaluated as one of flow.

And so we'll talk about this a little bit more in both the relational and the sort of philosophical

aspects of it.

But from a practical perspective, what this feels like is that the work that you're

doing has very little self awareness, but very little mental load when it comes to the

meta.

Right.

So when you're busy trying to figure out what to do and all that kind of stuff, that's

really a kind of a lower or different perspective.

When you're a master mason and you are confronted with the work, moving through the work becomes,

I would say, effortless because it's not quite effortless, but it's either there's less

sort of cognitive friction when it comes to the execution.

When you are in a master mason state, you can move quickly and easily from one test to

the next.

Context switching becomes easier.

Understanding when and where and how and why to do things.

It's all implied in that mastery in that mastery kind of understanding, masterful understanding.

So when you are trying to evaluate what that looks like for you behaviorally and you find

that you're having a hard time getting started in it, you might want to kind of cognitively

step back into a fellow craft mason's perspective from a sort of behavioral perspective and go,

listen, there are reasons why I'm not able to enter this state of flow from a practical perspective.

What are the things that I need to still learn about what I'm trying to get done so that

then I can move to that kind of powerful place of the master mason.

Again, with a lot of that practical sort of functional stuff, some of it is just making

sure that if you watch a master craftsman of any type, for example, the way they interact

with their tools is a real good indicator of kind of where they are in the scheme of things.

First off, a master mason or a master plumber or a master craftsman or carpenter or whatever.

Bring the tools within that they need plus any other extras that might be useful when

they pop up, but they don't just kind of just toss them around.

They deliberately set them up and put them in arrangement either the order they're going

to need them, the order they're going to use them, they'll know what tools are required

to solve the problem.

The same thing is true when you're working with somebody that's a master in a cognitive

domain, an attorney, a doctor, creative of various types, they will bring with them the

tools that they need to solve the problem.

Maybe you identify the first place to look.

That mastery can again be evaluated really as a complete or almost complete reduction

of the decision making processes around the meta process of the work.

Those are all kind of behind the master mason.

They've learned all of those things such that when it comes time to do the work, they

can just work.

If you find yourself struggling to get to that against a back to fellow craft, give

it another look, see what you might be missing and then move into a more of a masterful space.

From that behavioral perspective as well, the master experience is informed by yourself,

by yourself concept and all that kind of stuff, but not dictated by it.

You are not executing the work in service to more of an unscated or poorly understood internal

concepts.

It's much more a function of kind of a clear, vulnerable and authentic execution.

And that will make its way into the work in this very, very kind of visible way.

When you see somebody in flow, practical flow, a lot of the practical requirements of

life kind of fade to the background.

You might skip meals, you might skip or delay bathroom breaks because you're in a spot

where you're just so able to effortlessly execute that it's hard to leave that space

as well.

So as you start to look for that, please share your notes on how you get into that flow

state and what that looks like from a practical functional perspective.

And we'll see you in the next episode.