Mastery
Robert Greene

Summary

Robert does a great job using various examples from history how to become a master of your domain.

Rating: 4/5

Notes

The visual and the social - reasons how humans evolved from apes

All great masters in history: a youthful passion, a chance encounter to apply it and apprenticeship where they come alive

We think intellectual power is correlated with success and achievement but it’s really desire, patience, persistence and confidence

People get the mind and quality of brain that they deserve through their actions

You want to see work as part of your ‘creation’ and understand it as a journey w/ twists and turns rather than a straight line

‘You are and will be the only person in human history w/ your DNA’

Become who you are by learning who you are - Pindar

Understand your origins

To master a field, you must love the subject and feel a powerful connection to it

Occupy the perfect niche

Find a niche you can dominate and master

Avoid the false path

You are on your own and change is inevitable

Improve your weaknesses and resist the temptation to be like others

Concentrate on becoming sufficient at simple and immediate skills

Masters have a self directed apprenticeship usually lasting 5-10 years

The goal of apprenticeship is not money, fame or title: it’s about transforming your mind and character

Choose positions and places of work that have the greatest opportunity for learning

3 steps: deep observation (passive mode), skills acquisition (practice mode) and experimentation (active mode)

In the first little while, just deeply observe the rules and relationship dynamics

Our brains are highly suited for learning through mirror neurons: watching experts

Begin with one essential skill and understand that the first little bit will be tedious

The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways

You should find a way to work w/ your hands

Value learning over money and everything else

Keep expanding your horizons and mingle with as many different kinds of people as possible

Feel a sense of inferiority: it gives you a hunger to learn

Trust the process: time is the magic ingredient. You just have to stay disciplined and consistent

Move toward resistance and pain

• Create a space for focus and deliberate work

Apprentice yourself in failure

Combine the ‘what’ w/ the ‘how’; things work

Move by trial and error

There are no shortcuts in apprenticeship

You need a mentor in your life that pushes you but you surpass them

To learn requires a sense of humility

You want person to person access so don’t shy away from menial tasks and keep their self interest top of mind

Choose the mentor according to your needs and inclinations

You must continually start over and challenge yourself

When reading people, focus your attention on how they think, not you

Learn specific knowledge - reading people and general knowledge - human behaviour

Pay less attention to people’s words but how they say it - tone, body language, look in the eye

• Look for common emotional experiences to relate to others
• Actions say more about a person’s character than words every do
• Avoid making judgements of people based on initial impressions

Seven deadly realities: envy, conformism, rigidity, self-obsessiveness, laziness, flightiness and passive aggression

• Envy: be wary of those who are overly friendly. Be careful not to boast about success and use self-deprecating humour
• Conformism: reserve your most interesting thoughts for your friends. Be careful with what you say
• Rigidity: accept it in others but maintain your spirit on your own
• Self-obsessiveness: always appear to someone’s self interest. Give them something valuable in exchange for helping you
• Laziness: keep your ideas to yourself
• Flightiness: do not take people’s promises to help seriously. Rely on yourself to get things done
• Passive aggression: focus on people’s actions and what others do around them

The foundation of learning is reading

Your work is the single greatest means for expressing social intelligence

People will judge you based on your outward appearance

You will always deal with fools - people focused on short term matters

• Suffer fools globally - never let them affect you

Once you’ve learned, you will feel anxious and insecure about using your knowledge but you must push against that. Become bold

Aim to have a dimensional mind: a high level of knowledge on a subject and an openness and flexibility to use this knowledge in new ways

Your emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated directly into your work. It has to come from deep within

You cannot find anything new if you are unwilling to leave the shore

Cultivate negative capability: suspend the need to judge everything you see

Allow serendipity to enter your life: spend your time doing other things

‘Chance favours only the prepared mind’ - Louis Pasteur

Keep a notebook on you all the time and record everything

Speculation is the heart and soul of human rationality, our way of connecting to reality and seeing the invisible

Alter your perspective

• Look at the ‘how’ instead of the ‘what’
• Pay greater attention to the relationship between things
• Study the details but don’t become lost in them
• Focus on what may be missing instead of what’s present

Resistance is the way to make the body stronger, same with the mind

Try and visualize concepts and ideas more

Always try to work with deadlines, whether real or manufactured

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read

Remind yourself how little you know and how mysterious the world is

The greatest impediment to creativity is your impatience

Read info from all different fields - keep you mind completely open

Constantly remind yourself of your purpose, of your higher goal

The essential character trait in an entrepreneur is supreme tenacity

Let go of the need to create dualities for everything and look holistically

Make your years of study qualitatively rich

Every setback, failure or hardship is a seed being planted for cultivation later

Mastery is not a function of genius or talent; it is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge

Know your strengths and move with them

The person w/ the wider global perspective will always win out

‘Look wider and think further ahead’

In order to understand ppl, you must develop mirror neurons and imagine their perspective

Rich ideas come from extending your knowledge further and farther away

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