The Perfect Egg: A Micromastery Manifesto
It was crispy in all the right places, fluffy in others. A bloated snowball with a yellow core. Its fragile heart easily burst with the slightest pressure of my thumb (or, as fate would have it, the savagery of a fork’s four tines).
In the funny way the universe often works — that is, by accident — the temperature of the simmering pot of water had aligned with the time necessary for the ovalbumin protein to quickly denature, creating a white-walled capsule trapping the runaway yolk inside.
The result?
A perfect poached egg.
I’m not going to lie, the second egg was not quite as cute. “Teeming with ribbons/ Like the unfinished hem of a dress,” as one poet puts it, my second try was more exemplary of what a poached egg 100% should not look like.
That’s alright though — I had made a perfect poached egg. Was it consistent? No. Was it actually perfect? Close enough to make my mom proud (she sent me four clapping emojis over WhatsApp).
And that’s all that really mattered. My ego was boosted, my pride bolstered, my confidence soared: I was a master poacher, hear me roar.
It’s a familiar feeling. In his book The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene describes mastering a skill as giving your brain “the sense of purpose and direction that it craves.”
The combination of tedious, demanding practice, humbling apprenticeship, and the eventual rewarding result is an intoxicating endorphin cocktail responsible for keeping us learning (and mastering) new things despite the often arduous process preceding it.
It is the same reason why thousands flock to Mount Everest every year to try and reach its summit knowing they will experience near-certain brushes with death, discomfort, and danger.
Legendary British mountaineer, George Mallory, put it best after “conquering” one of his many Alpine expeditions: “Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves.”
What Mallory and Greene both understood is that we never really go through learning new things just for the heck of it nor because we’re irredeemable masochists.
No, we go through the fumbling, frustrating novice stage in order to test ourselves and, by mastering some part of our external world, to prove that maybe we can master some part of our internal chaos too.
It has been argued that perfecting something as small as an egg can elicit similar feelings of reward, control, and growth as mastery of something like a PhD in Physics (and at a fraction of the price!).
It’s called micromastery — or, “working to develop competence in a single, concrete skill.”
Coined by writers Tahir Shah and Robert Twigger, the term became the topic of Twigger’s 2017 book, Micromastery: Learn Small, Learn Fast, and Unlock Your Potential to Achieve Anything. Lessons in the book include how to climb a rope, surf standing up, bake artisan bread, and juggle four balls.
While Twigger encourages readers to try micromastery for a boost in their “optimism, confidence, memory, [and] cognitive skills,” the restorative effects of achieving small-scale proficiency have also proven to be therapeutic.
In a piece by Brandy Jensen titled “How to Poach An Egg and Leave A Marriage,” she equates conquering the perfect breakfast staple to overcoming parting ways with her husband.
Cooking had always been delegated to her husband and thus, “perfecting a difficult task — the hardest way to cook the easiest thing to cook — that requires care and attention” promised a sense of independence from someone she no longer wanted to be dependent on.
Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but rebellion is best served hot and runny (perhaps with some hollandaise sauce drizzled on top).
For Francisco Goldman, award-winning author and widower, this practice is nothing new. In his book, The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle, a part memoir/part political reportage, he describes his quest to conquer, through stick-shift, the city that raised the wife he lost five years prior.
By confronting and overcoming his fear of driving in the “circuito interior,” the city’s hectic network of unpredictable roads (which, as someone who lived there, I can tell you is no easy feat), he comes to terms with the similarly unpredictable fragility of life and inevitability of loss.
Chaotic, conflicted, and conflicting — both the city and his emotions were mastered by the end of the book.
While I am not currently undergoing a life-altering experience such as divorce or grief, my newfound eggspertise (you really thought I wouldn’t include that somewhere?) has convinced me to incorporate micromastery into my life in a more intentional way.
As a student at Princeton, it’s easy to get lost in the seemingly endless stretch of the Future — a future where I have a Very Official bachelor’s degree, a stable job in my area of Specialized Study, and a sense of Mastery in something Big and Important (perhaps indicated by an aptly-named master’s degree).
Ah, but on the way, wouldn’t it be nice to also reap the satisfying rewards of smaller, minuscule m, mastery? Skills that will never make it to my resume, but will surely come up someday, somehow or other?
Might as well start with breakfast.
If you want to learn more about micromastery, I suggest reading Kelsey Osgood’s inspiring piece on her own experience: https://elemental.medium.com/why-you-should-try-micromastery-90b080b3befa
