Recently I finished reading Mastery by Robert Greene. I first read it after completing my Master’s degree in the summer of 2016. I can’t remember what triggered my interest in reading it but I can recall the impact it had on me, the first chapter in particular.

In this book, Robert offers a framework for achieving mastery in any field. He proposes three stages that lead to mastery in anything: Apprenticeship, Creative-Active and Mastery. But before all that, he says you must know what you were born to do, you must know your “life’s task.”

It all totally resonated me with. The framework that Robert lays out is one that I had been following to some extent. I had chosen a field of study, worked my arse off, learned and worked with talented people, and I was ready to experiment. But after a few months after graduating, I became disenchanted with the area of study I had chosen and the conventional path to employment.

This phase of my life was a great experience. It gave me time to evaluate what I wanted to do and try out other things. I also learned about myself. For example, I realised that I wanted control, freedom and financial success — I became aware that I wanted to be self-reliant in all aspects of my life.

Then I stumbled on entrepreneurship, again.  I suppose I was back to square one in the context of Robert’s framework. This didn’t dishearten me, though. Instead, I saw it as part of my journey to discovering my life’s task: entrepreneurship.

Robert Greene’s Mastery summary

The following are my notes that I had taken at the time. They include key points, lessons and my thoughts.

• You must find out your purpose, what makes you tick as early as possible to give yourself the best chance of attaining mastery.
• Don’t pursue mastery in a field for the wrong reasons. Instead, focus deeply on what you love, and success will follow.
• In anything in life, there are people who are better than you, more talented and more experienced — don’t be envious, instead learn from them. Observe these people closely, continually experiment and engage in intense training — and avoid distraction, the biggest danger to attaining mastery in our modern world.
• Discipline. You must develop the habit of training when you don’t feel like working. To make this easier, manufacture an environment that supports you, like surrounding yourself with highly motivated people.
• Enjoy the process of learning, read into a range of disciplines and the dots will connect in time.
• Be humble and nurture the childlike curiosity within you to speed your learning and arouse your creative energy.
• Be ambitious and adventurous because failures from such sources will reveal your deficiencies, from which you can then learn.
• The road to mastery can be ruthless at times, so you will fail, many times. Endure repeated failures because they will toughen your character.
• Through trial and error learn where your interests and skills converge, and such realisation will seed unique and life-changing possibilities.
• Find a mentor(s) in your field, someone who can mentor you in person. However, if your circumstance restricts such possibility, then identify relevant books.
• Move towards resistance when boredom kicks in during your apprenticeship phase, and maintain patience and faith during the process.
• Understand that everybody has a unique way of seeing the world. Develop the ability to quickly read people in your environment as understanding people’s intent is invaluable.
• Don’t be fooled into judging people too quickly as by nature people wear an array of masks.
• The path to mastery requires you to also be aware of the negative traits ingrained within every human being such as envy, conformism, Rigidity, self-obsessiveness, laziness, flightiness, and passive aggression.
• Domain-specific knowledge is not enough, you must also develop social intelligence.
• Mastery of the rudiments of your domain and social intelligence paves the way for you to explore the unexplored aspects of your field.
• Understand that creativity is by nature uncertain.
• Become more creative by accepting and appreciating uncertainty.
• Appreciate serendipity — the feeling just before you go bed after a funfilled day, and let go of your thoughts.
• The road to mastery can be intimidating, so develop patience and discipline.

Should you read Mastery?

In short, yes. I would definitely recommend reading Mastery.

I bought a physical copy of Mastery and don’t regret it. It had a big impact on me and found it an engaging read — I still reread some passages. It made me realise that there no shortcuts to attaining success, that the effortless path to success does not exist — something that is hardly preached in our modern world.

The world has evolved significantly and our era has become the greatest time to be alive. Scientific and technological strides have made us more connected, but more importantly, they have made masses of information accessible to everyone.

But there is a negative to our modern time period: Distraction. It’s rife. So I’m glad we have thinkers like Robert Greene to address the dangers on the path to success and how we can avoid them.