Do you want to become a master?(a book review of Mastery by Robert Greene)

At different epochs throughout the course of human history certain individuals have appeared that seem to have bent the fabric of reality itself but excelling in fields that existed before or by inventing new fields and categories altogether. When we look at them at a distance these “MASTERS” seem to carry a mystical aura aided by forces that seem beyond our grasp. It seems the chess world appreciates this phenomena more by calling the top tear players “Grandmasters”

The aim of this book is to understand the processes that undergoes the formation of such people( how they become who they are) because if you look closely they are not so much different from us and some where not even showing signs of becoming who they did earlier on. The book draws practical examples from characters like Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Faraday, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and some other contemporary characters like Benjamin Franklin.

We often run to luck, higher powers or naturally talent when we see people who have mastered a particular skill and there is certainly an element of truth in that but what we forget is that talent or luck alone are not enough to make tectonic impact, there is usually a background of thorough training that people try to ignore and most people aren’t willing to go through and even on the religious/spiritual front it is somehow the same thing; people(Joseph, Moses, Jesus) will spend a lot of time doing background work before they come on the scene to shape history as we know it.

So let me try to summarise the process in a few steps

1.Find your life vocation

This step is very important because it is the root of everything and getting it wrong will cost you a lot. Firstly when you looking for this vocation you have to separate it from the notion of work( as you can work at various things) because vocation has a divine element to it. It is more like finding your purpose or calling and finding it will involve analysing your whole experience as a whole and pinpoint those natural inclinations you always possessed (those things that you thing come naturally or you intensely enjoy doing) they might not be the exact vocation but they are what will put on on that path of discovery. Once done proceed to finding a mentor to start your apprenticeship.

2. Finding a mentor and Apprenticeship(or Self Teaching ?)

This is the longest and most challenging part to mastery as it will take a lot of resources both physically and psychologically. Once you have discovered your vocation there are two paths to mastery either you find a mentor and begin your apprenticeship or you start teaching yourself. The first option is more ideal for a number of reasons: you will be under person who has experience hence they will try to optimize your learning by avoiding the necessary pitfalls and give you real time feedback on your progress. This whole process is lengthy and can take someone 10000 hours or even more and you might be required to change mentors of course. Choosing a mentor is kind of a crucial thing depending on the availability of the person and you might have to go at it several times before you can find one that suits but do not as well spend eternity trying to find the perfect one that does not exist bypassing people who can further your apprenticeship.

It important to know your place in the hierarchy to avoid certain frustrations as some mentors will require you to do extra tasks for them outside the things you seek to learn. This is where social intelligence comes in because without it you loose eyes on the goal and get lost in the politics that surround work/learning places.

They are barriers to all this especially in the modern world as sometimes you would be paid less( sometimes you might even work without pay/volunteer) , sometimes the kind of mentors that you need are inaccessible at your level or require that you are required to pay which you might not be possible when we lack finances. In such cases you can do a hybrid of the two getting the basics you can get from a mentor that you can get and then supplementing it with self taught knowledge.

The biggest disadvantage for self teaching is that most of us do not have the discipline to follow it through and the feedback can be quite poor.Your aim during this period is absorb as much as you can from your mentor and learn the basics of your field to perfection if possible because without that is is difficult to proceed to the next level as the things you leave unlearned will show up when you start producing your own work. Its not all ease as sometimes you have to take unconventional ways against family( Father figures especially) and society and several people like Charles Darwin and Leonardo da Vinci had to give up prospective careers to follow their path.

The better you get you might start falling out with your mentor (avoid pride though) and it can be a sign that it might be time to leave the nest and start learning how to fly. “The disciple is not above his master but every one who is perfect shall be as his master” if you stay there you might become a lifetime apprentice so once you are sure you have done all you could or the situation is obliging you( do not burn bridges unnecessarily) do not fear but progress to the next step.

(there is a lot to unpack……check out the book)

3.Awaken your creative powers

The steps are not at all sequential and you might be required to go back and forth between them so don’t have a linear idea of the journey as at times you might be required to go the first principles.

This phase might start showing itself and mostly does while you are still under the tutelage of your mentor and if you find yourself lucky your mentor is even the one that will encourage you to take responsibility of more complex tasks and explore your own ways of doing certain things.

At this point you have more or less mastered the basics and they are many ways you can use to propel yourself forward:

Creating tasks that are challenging especially in crafts or creative work. This is important as it is in just producing something your own that you can see how much you have learned and how well you have learned it and sometimes to avoid exposing ourselves to criticism we end up just judging other peoples work whilst we continue doing mediocre work assigned to us with no venture to even try out our ideas (it always easier to criticise than to build).

Looking for things that you feel are missing is also another way of finding your ideas. As you learn a field there are some things you might see that need to be expressed, improved on or taken out. Focusing on creating and experience as you would wish will push you to find solutions to problems people have been experiencing but have not found ways to articulate them.

Paying attention to details of a process will allow you to spot a group of micro changes that can be made to make a whole system better as it is not always that a radical shift is required to make things better but by simply making things more efficient you can be surprised how much of an impact that can have on people, art, work processes, and human interactions.

Lastly there are things to avoid: conservatism(old ideas can always be challenged), complacency(do not declare yourself master before your time and stop improving), dependency, impatience, grandiosity and inflexibility.

4.Fuse intuition and Rationality(mastery)

At this stage you have acquired as much knowledge and experience, you have trained your eye and mind to pick up signals that others will easily bypass , years of practice have transformed your intuitive powers to levels certain things come naturally. At this stage staying conventional wont help as the world that we live in is ever changing and abiding to norms will not distinguish you( make you a master). Therefore there is need to infuse those intuitive ideas in the fabric of the material you have acquired through various sources and produce something that is unique or enable you to do things in ways that people have not done them in a while and that is what will create masterpieces.

Looking at work of masters you’ll see that there is something particular an almost impossible thing until expressed and the level where intuitions can be channeled and expressed in work is the highest level of mastery.

The most important thing is to know that this process is not linear and you can at various stages at the same time in different domains. You might equally be required to go back to previous stages and learn. There are always ways to perfect your skills and you will see that there are more mountains to climb as the peak of one mountain is the the foot of another.

My Thoughts

The book is well structure has uncovered a lot of methodology that goes into the learning process and the patience that goes along with it especially for this fast food and tik tok generation of ours where every one wants to learn everything by a crash course on the Internet. It lays a broad foundation and structure that can be applied to everything that you are trying to learn despite your background, profession ,geography and all other factors that will affect your learning curve.

As always it is difficult to separate the author from his work and this work equally reflects on the inclinations of the writer as far as the structure of the world is concerned( I have not confirmed but am persuaded he is an atheist ). That can be seen by the type of models he picks for demonstrating his ideas (People like Daniel Everret who abandoned faith in order to immense themselves in their work) So that in mind it is important to know how to pick information( Don't be rigid) but is important to know the substructure behind a person's thinking to know what they are communicating and in our times (the west especially) religion(spirituality) is not viewed as something logical to some extent or it has been reduced to just something that is symbolic.

I have tried to avoid his work (33 laws of power especially) but MASTERY and THE LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE are compelling tittles I could not refrain to read.

HAPPY READING

@Chungamu