THE BOOK IN 3 SENTENCES
The most successful path to mastering anything is to practice for the sake of the practice itself, not for the result. All significant learning is composed of brief spurts of progress followed by long periods of work where if feels as if you are stuck on a plateau. There are no experts–only learners.
MASTERY SUMMARY - by George Leonard
Definition of mastery: the mysterious process during which what is at first difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable through practice.
If there is any sure route to success and fulfillment in life, it is to be found in the long-term, essentially goalless process of mastery.
All significant learning is composed of brief spurts of progress followed by long periods of work where if feels as if you’re going nowhere.
TAKE AWAYS:
1. On the path to improvement: the general progression is always the same.
2. To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so, you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even hen you seem to be getting nowhere.
3. As we practice things, even though it feels like we are making no progress at all, we are turning new behaviours into habits. Learning is happening all along.
4. The most successful path to mastery is to practice for the sake of the practice itself. Not for the result.
5. The anti-mastery mentality is focused on quick fixes.
6. The five keys to mastery: Instruction, Practice, Surrender, Intentionality, and The Edge.
7. On learning: For mastering most skills, there’s nothing better than being in the hands of a master teacher.
8. On finding a good teacher: To see the teacher clearly, look at his students.
9. The best teachers strive to point out what a student is doing right just as frequently as what they are doing wrong. The idea of a teacher rarely giving praise and teaching through strict criticism is a myth.
10. One benefit of learning slowly: it forces you to look deeply at the process and you discover incremental steps that you might otherwise gloss over if progress came easily.
11. The best teachers are the ones who have discovered how to involve each student actively in the process of learning.
12. Practice is often used as a description of what we do. Instead, we can look at practice as something we have, something we are defined by.
13. Rewards will always come to someone who commits to the practice, but the rewards are not the goal. The practice is the goal.
14. The master of any game is generally the master of practice as well.
15. Almost without exception, those who are masters are dedicated to the fundamentals of their calling. At the same time, they are the ones most likely to challenge their previous limits.
16. Homeostasis: Our body, brain, and behavior have a built in tendency to stay within very narrow limits. Homeostasis works to keep things as they are even if they aren’t very good.
17. Follow a practice. People embarking on any form of change will gain stability and comfort though practicing something daily. The practice provides a stable base during the instability of change.
18. To learn is to change. Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning.
19. A human being is the kind of machine that wears out from lack of use. There are limits, but for the most part we gain energy by using energy.
20. Maintain physical fitness. It contributes enormous energy to our lives.
Acknowledge the negative and accentuate the positive.
21. To move in one direction, you must forgo all others. To pursue one goal is to forsake a very large number of other possible goals.
22. Avoid injury. Most people get injured because of goal obsessiveness. Pay attention to the signals your body gives and negotiate with them—but don’t override them or ignore them.
23. To be deadly serious is to suffer tunnel vision. Humor not only lightens your load, it broadens your vision.
24. The plateaus, the ups, and the downs are even greater in our relationships than in other areas of life. And you will discover that your greatest learning happens on the plateaus.
25. If you want to truly master something, you must be willing to remain a beginner and look a fool. The beginner’s mind is required for learning anything new.
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