Book Review - Mastery by Robert Greene

A teen entrepreneur's book review of Mastery by Robert Greene

Overview

Mastery by Robert Greene goes over several key points to help people live a directional, purposeful life. This book aims to help people who are wondering what to do with their life, have a lack of meaning in their life, or just feel like “something is missing.”

Mr. Greene highlights the lives of many masters throughout history and extracts the lessons that can be learned from each. He then goes on to give clear, concise advice on how to apply the lessons to one’s life.

Key Points:

1. Discover Your Life’s Task

Mr. Greene illustrates how Leonardo da Vinci found his life’s calling. Leonardo was born out of wedlock, which in those days barred him from being able to attend university or to practice a noble profession. As a result, he was given little schooling and had much free time and began drawing.

Throughout his career, Leonardo would never settle for mediocrity. He desired that everything he did exude greatness. He felt as if something were compelling him forward, driving him on.

Often we settle for what we think we should be doing. We like the things we think we should like, and we are friends with the people we think we should be. This will never leads us to Mastery.

We need to let go of what others think and focus on what inspires us.

There is a true story of a girl whose father found her up late at night playing chess. When he told her to leave the pieces alone, she retorted “Daddy, they won’t leave me alone!”

Can you imagine what it would feel like to be that passionate about something? No wonder this girl when on the be a Grand Master.

Do not just do what you is the “right” thing to do. Do what you were made to do.

2. The Ideal Apprenticeship

Oftentimes we think we are done learning when our schooling is over. A recent graduate could be fresh out of school and head right into his first job. Schooling can help to prepare one for a job, but there are many things that must be learned on the job. You must become an apprentice to your work. There are three stages to learning from your work.

1. Deep Observation

Study your work. Look at how others perform around you. Are there any customs? If so, why and how might they have come about? Look at top performers in your field. What do they do and how?

2. Skills Acquisition

Once you have an idea of how you are supposed to be doing any given task, it is time to put it into practice. Repeating a process over and over again will help you to hone and adapt your skills.

3. Experimentation

If all you do is learn how to do your tasks well, you will be an excellent employee, but not a Master. Add some creativity, initiate a project, break some rules. You have to think outside of the box.

Apprenticeship was the main model of education in the middle ages. A young man would be indentured to a tradesman and work for a number of years under his tutelage. This model produced many masters. It was so effective because by the time a young man’s apprenticeship was complete, he had been working at the trade long enough to become a master himself.

3. The Mentor Dynamic

Mr. Greene tells the story of young Michael Faraday who grew up in poverty but rose to become a great scientist. Faraday became a book binding apprentice at a young age but avidly studied science in his free time.

Against all odds, he was able to become the laboratory assistant to a notable scientist of the time. Once Faraday had access to a laboratory, his knowledge and love of science grew tremendously. He was able to gain valuable knowlege from watching and assisting his mentor.

He made several discoveries, but his mentor claimed credit for many of them. Faraday ended up having to “break free” from his mentor. He went on to make several more important discoveries.

The purpose of having a mentor is to learn everything you can from them, not to become a carbon copy of them. A mentor is meant to help you blossom into the unique person you were meant to be.

4. Social Intelligence

Benjamin Franklin was a bright young man. He worked in his brother’s printing shop as an editor but desired to be a writer as well. When Franklin asked his brother if he could write for his newspaper, his brother refused. Franklin changed tactics. He send in anonymous stories to his brother, who was fascinated by them and put them in his paper. One day he confessed to his brother. His brother was furious, and Franklin was out of a job.

Through this encounter, Franklin learned that it is more important to know how to work with people than to have exceptional skill. He took this lesson with him through life.

5. The Creative Active

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart grew up hearing lively court music. The child protege traveled around Europe performing cheery tunes for enchanted audiences. When Mozart began composing depressing, dark music in his adolescence, his father begged him to stop. His father was afraid that if the court heard this music, they would think that Mozart had gone insane. He agreed and wrote the kind of music that was suitable for court, but he began to feel unfulfilled. Finally, he parted with his father and quit his job.

He had felt held back, but now his music freely flowed forth. He became a sensation.

Masters must stay in touch with the creative mind. Too often our creativity can be drowned out by the worries of the world. We let concerns about money, status, etc. stifle our creativity. Mr. Greene suggests three steps to retain our creativity.

1. The Creative Task

For us to blossom in our creativity, we must be engaged in the right task. If I have no love for plumbing, it does not matter how hard I try to be a creative plumber. I will not achieve mastery.

2. Creative Strategies

One strategy that Mr. Greene highlights for building creativity is allowing for serendipity. You can do this by consciously forcing yourself out of your field of study. Our tendency is to narrow our focus to conserve energy, but we need to broaden our minds.

Many masters drew inspiration from fields completely unrelated to their own and incorporated it into their work.

3. Creative Breakthrough

Many masters abandoned their masterpieces right before completion. They came up against a wall and doubted the worthiness of their work. Then, once they had left their project, inspiration struck. Sometimes, the most valuable action we can take is to stop.

6. Mastery

The creative must fuse with the rational. A master is someone who has such extensive experience in a field that he can intuitively “sense” things.

There is a true story of a woman EMT who looked at a man and told him that he needed to go to the hospital. He looked fine. He laughed and said that he felt fine. She insisted that he go to the hospital.

A few hours later he was in the hospital undergoing a life saving surgery.

This EMT had gained so much knowledge in the emergency medical world that she was simply able to “sense” that something was wrong with the man.

A key to mastery is being able to know if something is right or wrong, even when you cannot put your finger on it.

Conclusion

Mr. Greene gives a through and comprehensive guide to helping people achieve mastery. I recommend reading the book to understand each of the steps broken down further. You will be led through the process of finding your life’s calling to achieving mastery. Happy reading!

Mr. Green has published several books, edited several magazines, and is a playwright.