Thanks for the recommendation, will probably buy it.

In the same vein of becoming excellent at stuff, I really enjoyed Josh Waitzkins 'The Art of Learning": http://www.amazon.com/Art-Learning-Journey-Pursuit-Excellence/dp/0743277457

Really good stuff there. He talks about the parallels in deep competence he experienced in becoming a chess and push-hands tai chi champ.

Yeah, Waitzkin's Art of Learning is excellent and recommended as well. Good stuff.

After reading this post, I think I might like this book more than Trump's, but I will definitely have to check both out now.

I'm a fan of anything that is uplifting, but once that excitement wears off, I have to review whether I got anything valuable out of the resource or whether it just boosted my ego for a few moments. In this book (Mastery), the lessons sound to be more grounded and based on something you'll refer to when you are down, which to me would be the best time to recall a motivational book. In any book with lots of high notes, you remember the high notes during your high notes.

I think it will be interesting to see how you remember this book as time passes in comparison to Trump's, simply because you might associate bad moments with this book and it may get you through those moments better than when starting or working on something with easy to reach high notes.

Interesting take on this book. It's actually one of my favourite motivational books, but it's not designed to get you pumped up. I read it a while back when i first started to train Aikido and to use his terms, it allowed me to push through the initial plateau's I met in training. There were days when i was mentally exhausted but would force myself to train anyway. At the end of a tough session I always came away feeling invigorated. I think a plateau is a feeling like inertia, something pushing against you. Once you know what it feels like, you can deal with it.

The reason it is so important for me is that I've always gone along way into new skills, disciplines and areas of learning, and then quit. The message of this book is there will be peaks and troughs in everything you do, but you never get anywhere by quitting. So even five minutes of focus a day during a plateau is enough to keep your goal of mastering a discipline well and truly alive.

Hey Sebastian,

I was left with the impression that you were put off by the long time efforts mentioned in the book. In regard to the efforts there is a book that explains it well and give different point of view\though not talking about plataeu\. I'm probably getting boring with recommending but this is another good book I listened to MindSet The New Psychology of Success .

I've researched mastery. The author of "Mastery" talks about excellence in an area. You can do pretty well without so much time though you won't be one of the best. For instance your goal to be a strategist. You know It will take long time. That is what I think he refers to mastery.

People like Tim Ferris and Josh Waitzkin have achieved great results in fair time and that is OK to do well but I suppose they are not masters and they don't need to be because they are generalists.

Definitely! In my experience the motivation from books like Trumps wears of relatively quickly.

Yeah, I thought that message was incredibly valuable. Interestingly, he spends little time talking about the benefits/rewards to being on the path - it's kind of implied, but he doesn't stress the end of the road.

That said, I did enjoy it, I do recommend it, and I'm actually appreciating the book even more as time passes. There's a lot of books I enjoyed more in the process of reading them than Mastery, but I am appreciating the plateau point - it's good and important.

The reason I wrote about the downer was after reading his chapter of someone who starts taking up tennis who just wants to play a decent competitive game, and the teacher stresses it'll be 10 years before he can do that. He's correct, of course, but it's not an inspiration to take action and try new things. It is good for someone already on the path, but probably not for someone who isn't, if that makes sense?

The Mindset book looks good - thanks for the recommendation Georgi, I'll probably pick up a copy when my reading list thins out a little more, cheers.

A thought provoking reply.This is what I came up with.
We live in a complex world where many competencies make the man more successful. And trying new thing is a new way of our age.
In the East a master of one art easily became master in other arts. This was achieved only through practice.There is legends of warriors trying themselves out not by sword but by competition in some other area. This phenomenon is mentioned numerous times so I'm sure is true. Miamoto Musashi was master of many arts (crafts) and he learned them quickly. In our time such man are Tim Ferris and Josh Waitzkin. So I reached a conclusion that not the particular art or craft, ability is important in acquiring it. the important thing is the process by which you master the art. If you are familiar with the process (of learning) acquiring the skills is quicker than usual. But it seems it is not easy to learn the process because a practice and some guidance is needed. I think that a generalist may achieve the process, just the way he achieves it is different than the usual. What I'm saying is that the process is important not the area you practice.

Very good analysis, particularly this:

> This phenomenon is mentioned numerous times so I’m sure is true. Miamoto Musashi was master of many arts (crafts) and he learned them quickly. In our time such man are Tim Ferris and Josh Waitzkin. So I reached a conclusion that not the particular art or craft, ability is important in acquiring it. the important thing is the process by which you master the art. If you are familiar with the process (of learning) acquiring the skills is quicker than usual. But it seems it is not easy to learn the process because a practice and some guidance is needed. I think that a generalist may achieve the process, just the way he achieves it is different than the usual. What I’m saying is that the process is important not the area you practice.

"If you are familiar with the process (of learning) acquiring the skills is quicker than usual. But it seems it is not easy to learn the process because a practice and some guidance is needed." -> That's a good insight, yes. I think we're starting to see more guides on how to think about thinking, like Waitzkin's Art of Learning or where Ferriss analyzes what worked for him. Also, the internet and Wikipedia in particular makes it easy to overview distant eras of history... that was quite difficult before, where now it's pretty easy to get the basic principles of a guy like Rothschild, Musashi, Jefferson, Medici, Rockefeller, or a Lee Kuan Yew to use a more recent example. That used to be expensive and difficult before, now it's quite easy. So I think there's going to be room for large amounts of (relatively) quick achievement, at least by historical standards. But yes, it's still a largely unblazed path - a lot of work remains to be done. Great comment here.