Quotes About Mastery

1) your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you're trying to improve or an idea you're trying to master; (2) you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it's most productive.

By focusing intensely on a specific skill, you're forcing the specific relevant circuit to fire, again and again, in isolation. This repetitive use of a specific circuit triggers cells called oligodendrocytes to begin wrapping layers of myelin around the neurons in the circuits—effectively cementing the skill.

Hours spent in serious study of the game was not just the most important factor in predicting chess skill, it dominated the other factors.

Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy The ability to quickly master hard things. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things.

You need to get good in order to get good things in your working life, and the craftsman mindset is focused on achieving exactly this goal.

The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,

method for building skills by ruthlessly stretching yourself beyond where you're comfortable.

To successfully adopt the craftsman mindset, therefore, we have to approach our jobs in the same way that Jordan approaches his guitar playing or Garry Kasparov his chess training—with a dedication to deliberate practice.

According to Johnson's theory, Sarah would have been better served by first mastering a promising niche—a task that may take years—and only then turning her attention to seeking a mission.

The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that's the hardest phase,

1. The ability to quickly master hard things. 2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

You need to get good in order to get good things in your working life.

To succeed you have to produce the absolute best stuff you're capable of producing—a task that requires depth.

Autonomy: the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important Competence: the feeling that you are good at what you do Relatedness: the feeling of connection to other people

Don't follow your passion; rather, let it follow in your quest to become, in the words of my favorite Steve Martin quote, "so good that they can't ignore you.

My suggestion is that you try to learn and apply one new skill every week, over a period of six weeks. Start with easy projects like those suggested above, but as soon as you feel the challenge wane, ramp up the complication of the skills and steps involved.

differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.

To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction. To learn, in other words, is an act of deep work. If you're comfortable going deep, you'll be comfortable mastering the increasingly complex systems and skills needed to thrive in our economy. If you instead remain one of the many for whom depth is uncomfortable and distraction ubiquitous, you shouldn't expect these systems and skills to come easily to you.

there's something liberating about the craftsman mindset: It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is "just right," and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good.

The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that's the hardest phase," he says.

Driven by this insight, while my classmates contemplated their true calling, I went seeking opportunities to master rare skills that would yield big rewards.

Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy The ability to quickly master hard things. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed. Let's

if you're not putting in the effort to become, as Steve Martin put it, "so good they can't ignore you," you're not likely to end up loving your work—regardless of whether or not you believe it's your true calling.