A masterclass on a lost art
Years back, my friend Hypnautic recommended Robert Greene’s book The 48 Laws of Power to me when I was younger. I liked the illustration of power dynamics via historical examples, battles, political intrigues, and characters. This book takes a similar approach to examining the lives of various scientists, doctors, inventors, writers, and artists.
I’m glad I read Mastery but it wasn’t an epiphany-filled 352 pages for me. It basically confirmed a lot of things I’ve heard before about skill acquisition and personal development…
- The importance of apprenticeship
- The massive amounts of time that mastery requires
- Why social intelligence is key to mastery (“The ability to think inside other people is no different from the intuitive feel Masters gain in relation to their field of study.” p. 146)
- That we want to take both holistic and focused approaches to mastery
I have pursued the path to mastery in various disciplines. I have a black belt in a martial art, Tae Kwon Do. I mastered a second language and Joomla, the content management system that I work with.
One of my favorite examples from the book was that of Daniel Everett.
His job was to learn the language of a remote Amazonian tribe, so he could translate the Bible into their language and proselytize to them. Their language is one of the most unique in the world, it contains no colors or numbers and it doesn’t even really have a past or future tense. One of his breakthrough moments with this language came when he learned a word…
…one time he learned a new word that a Pirahã explained to him meant “what is in your head when you sleep.” The word then means to dream. But the word was used with a special intonation that Pirahã use when they are referring to a new experience.
(p. 301)
This was essentially their word for novelty, but their culture was hyper-focused on the present moment. The past and future they weren’t so worried about.
I think someone might get more out of this book who hasn’t gone through the process of mastery with anything yet. For me this book just kind of confirmed the things I already knew about personal development and skillset acquisition. The major takeaway from the book is that mastery takes a lot of work, the kind of mastery that changes the world takes a lifetime of pretty hard work. So I encourage you to figure out what is the motivation mechanism that could empower you to work hard for a lifetime…
- For some of the masters in the book, they were solving problems that saved lives.
- Some of them were empowered by social validation.
- Some were very religious and they believed they were working for a higher power.
- Some use smart drugs and Biohacking technologies to enhance their cognition and motivation.
As for me, I’m passionate about habits. When I wake up in the morning I’m not making plans for world domination, I’m just thinking about the habits I’m going to practice in the day to come.
I’ll finish with two quotes that jumped out at me from the book…
The problem that technology presents us is that it increases the amount of information at our disposal , but slowly degrades the power of our memory to retain it. (p. 265)
He called this future “the velocipedic age,” one determined by speed. He was concerned that it could lead to a deadening of the human spirit. (p. 308)
Check out this cool 4-minute warp-speed reading of the notable passages from the book…
