Have you ever read the book Mastery by George Leonard? It wonderfully captures what I’ve found to be true—there is a lot of fulfillment to be found through slow, conscious practice of some activity to the point of mastery. It’s like that now-somewhat-cliché Bruce Lee quote: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
The pursuit of mastery is notable not only because its outcomes are often powerful, however, but because it feels really damn good. The state of an activity itself becomes pleasurable. When you get closer to mastery, every movement of an activity feels like flow, a peaceful state where all your senses are celebrating and your focus is both strong and relaxed. If you want to live a life that feels vital and pleasurable, pursuing mastery of a variety of skills and subjects is a nice strategy for getting there.
For some people, an obstacle to achieving mastery lies in overcoming boredom. After all, repeating things without variation often emotionally feels like stagnation rather than progress in terms of skills, whether that’s factually true or not. Luckily there’s a simple gamified technique one could try to get past this obstacle: bingo! This simple game is familiar to most of us from childhood, and here I propose a version that might help you practice the pursuit of mastery in the field of cooking. The principle is simple. This bingo board is filled with a variety of cooking techniques. Your task is to pick a single ingredient (I picked cabbage for my experimental first try), and cook the same ingredient over and over again using the different techniques listed on the board, crossing off the relevant square once the dish is complete. You “win” by crossing off all the squares either in a vertical column, a horizontal row, or a diagonal line from one corner to another.
Download the bingo board below. Have fun, try it out, and share your results with the hashtag #thelucubrators. Be mindful as you go through the board. Truly feel yourself revisiting the same ingredient in a variety of ways, in a variety of challenges, and watch how your mind and body react. See what feels challenging to you, where you get bored, and whether experiencing this through cooking feels similar to the way you experience the pursuit of mastery in other areas of your life. And truly enjoy yourself—the more you cook, the more pleasure you’ll experience cooking.
What did you learn?
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