I don't know how wide spread self-awareness is, of individuals being aware of what they are doing; but I do feel acheiving mastery is very much universally experienced to some degree.
One of the things that separates craftworkers from others, apart from seeing visible results at the end of the day, is owning one's own skills, ability and competence. A factory or office worker, and also a great number of professional people toe the line every day to someone else's beck and call and are very conscious of other's expectations. This is true regardless of how good they are at what they do.
The experience of mastery came vividly to me one Saturday morning when I was doing maintenance at a Burger King restaurant. I did all building maintenance and repairs for a group of four family-owned restaurants on a part time basis for several years. On this particular morning, I'd gone to this store and been given the list of things needing fixing. The biggest concern was a broken section of wall behind a large kitchen sink, where the drywall had rotted, and there were a number of loose tile. To do repairs like this I'd learned to find methods to get the job done in one shot. I removed loose tile beyond the damaged area, cut back the drywall to a nearby stud and replace with 1/2" plywood, clean up the tile and glue them back in place with PL premium and grout and clean up. The job was 1 hr. 20 min. from home, so multiple trips was out of the question.
This was the first time I'd taken this approach, and once I'd gotten going on the task, getting ready to install the plywood oon the cutaway area, I had a jolting realization of wondering how i could "know" what to do. I do electrical work every day, had though I'd only seen the task an hour before I had arrived at a workable solution.
Being a novice is a mix of small victories, and uphill efforts to do what others around can do easily. You often have the feeling of working extremely hard; may think on some tasks you are the hardest working individual in the organisation. You may, though, be confusing effort with results. All part of the process; leading to the point at which most of the hard struggles to accomplish complex goals are behind you.
I would imagine Paul prefers to have work ahead of him, so that he usually has time to think about work, at least I do. You can start a job, unseen on Monday morning, but if I have a couple days, when I do come to take tools out of the truck I'm right ready to get at the work and it goes easier. And by 10:00 A.M. the work is going well, the customer expresses suprise at how much has been done, and you don't even feel like stopping for coffee. That's bliss.
