The road to mastery

I happened to pick up a copy of the book “Mastery: The Keys to Success & Long Term Fulfillment” by George Leonard recently after reading about it on a music blog. The book was first published in 1992 as a follow on to an article published in Esquire about how top performing athletes achieve break through performance. (Ok, to be clear, I do not read Esquire, but I still think the topic is intriguing.)

The question is: what is it that sets apart mere dabblers from those who are truly masters, whether in sports, business or the arts? It’s a good question. After all, if you could unlock the answer, then you could develop a blueprint for improving performance. And that’s exactly what Leonard set out to do.

While the book could be dismissed as “self help” pap, Leonard, who himself has a black belt in Akido, took an in-depth look at how people learn and develop skills. The results are fascinating and decidedly at-odds with the normal “quick fix” approach that is prevalent today, whether in books like “Learn Java in a Weekend,” online guitar lessons or fad diets.

Leonard describes the stages people go through in learning and what sets apart the masters from the hackers, the dabblers and the obsessives. A key take away is that learning (or more aptly, accomplishment) is based on achieving a series of plateaus, each of which may have the occasional setback. With dedicated practice (and hard work) you occasionally break through to a new level, which is yet another plateau. Mastery is based on loving the practice of what you’re doing and accepting that there will be long plateaus, occasional setbacks and perhaps rare breakthroughs.

As I was reading the book I was thinking back to my experience as a marathon runner. If you’ve ever run or even witnessed a marathon, you may be surprised to see the runners at the finish. They span the entire range of human shapes and sizes: big, tall, short, thin, heavy, young, old. But they all have perseverence and a love of running. I was never particularly athletic in my younger days, but I always liked running. One day, I decided to train for a half marathon, by adding two miles to my long run (then about 6 miles) every couple of weeks. From their I just kept adding more miles. Even though I managed to run quite a few marathons, I never thought of myself as having any particular natural talent or ability. But if you do enough running, and challenge yourself occasionally, you will become quite good at it.

I hit my share of plateaus over the years. For a while it seemed impossible to break a marathon time of 3:30 due to repeated injuries. But I changed my training, pushed harder and ultimately was able to break through, qualifying for and running Boston Marathon a couple of years ago. While it took a lot of time commitment for early morning runs speed work outs, and weekend long runs, the running itself was never a hardship. I loved going out and running 15 or 20 miles; for me it was meditative. (Sitting through a 3 hour staff meeting –now that’s a hardship.)

I used to joke that the “brute force” marathon approach could be applied to just about anything: building a business, learning guitar, speaking a second language, writing a novel. After reading Leonard’s book, I realize that’s more true than I thought. As long as you love the practice and stay committed to learning and improving, you will develop mastery. In tech, guys like Linus Torvalds, Anders Hejlsberg and Andy Bechtolsheim, may have had some innate abilities early on, but they sure as heck loved what they were doing, put in the long hours to hone their skills and had the humility and wisdom to never stop learning.

This is an admittedly off-topic posting, but I believe that the notion of “mastery” is a useful one. Success in work and in life rarely comes from quick fixes, but more often from long term hard work and a love of the game, whatever it is.

Do you love what you’re doing? Let me know your thoughts.