It will give you ways to use all that energy more efficiently and effectively. It will also help you avoid the burnout caused when you always go all-in into everything you are curious about.
This book could’ve easily been the best of the month if it wasn’t because I also finished ‘Fallen Leaves’ this month.
Flow: 5/5
Actionability: 5/5
Mindset: 5/5
Some of My Highlights:
“…mastery, ‘the mysterious process during which what is at first difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable through practice.”
“…in the long-term, essentially a goalless process of mastery.”
“But genius, no matter how bright, will come to naught or swiftly burn our if you don’t choose the master’s journey.”
“…you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere.”
“A stage ends when the habitual system has been programmed to the new task, and the cognitive effort systems have withdrawn.”
“How do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself.”
“Again and again we are told to do one thing only so that we can get something else.”
“If our life is a good one, a life of mastery, most of it will be spent on the plateau.”
“But it seems to me that mastery’s true face is relaxed and serene, sometimes faintly smiling.”
“Practice, the path of mastery, exists only in the present.”
“To love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life.”
“Man is a learning animal, and the essence of the species is encoded in that simple term.”
“…if you intend to take the journey to mastery, the best thing you can do is to arrange for first-rate instruction.”
“The search for good instruction starts with a look at credentials and lineage.”
“It’s particularly challenging, in fact, for a top performer to become a first-rate teacher.”
“To see the teacher clearly, look at the students.”
“…praise becoming so scarce a commodity that even a curt nod of grudging approval is taken to be highly rewarding.”
“The best teacher generally strives to point out what the student is doing right at least as frequently as what she or he is doing wrong.”
“Sometimes, strangely enough, those with exceptional talent have trouble staying on the path of mastery.”
“And the worst horse can be the best, for if it perseveres, it will have learned whatever it is practicing all the way to the marrow of its bones.”
“The typical school or college classroom, unhappily, is not a very good place to learn.”