PDF Summary:Mastery, by Robert Greene

How do figures such as Albert Einstein and Marie Curie do their greatest work? And can we follow in their footsteps? In Mastery, Robert Greene, famous for The 48 Laws of Power, argues that there is a clear path anyone can follow to achieve mastery, the highest level of creative excellence. He explains the three stages of mastery, and he argues that pursuing it yields a fulfilling life and great creative power.

Our guide explains Mastery in four parts, breaking down how Greene defines mastery and how to pursue it. You’ll learn how to develop new skills, discover why social know-how is crucial to rising in your field, and gain strategies for performing high-level creative work.

We’ll expand and scrutinize Greene’s ideas with perspectives from other prominent guides to high-level skillfulness—including The Art of Learning, Peak, and George Leonard’s Mastery. We’ll also examine where Greene appears to contradict himself, and whether you can achieve mastery at any age.

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For instance, think of the ancient Greeks: They created places such as Aristotle’s Lyceum, where people gathered to learn, teach, and engage in dialogue. Thus, any Greek philosopher had a rich community of creative thinkers within which to develop his ideas. In contrast, imagine if Aristotle had no other philosophers to dialogue with, and no background of past philosophy upon which to develop his ideas.

Learn to Read People

Greene suggests that a key element of social know-how is developing a realistic perspective of human nature and discarding any social naivete left over from childhood. He argues that people probably aren’t as good as you think, and he recommends that you avoid trying to change them. Instead, learn to work with them or make use of them.

(Shortform note: In contrast to Greene’s advice to view people as obstacles, Leil Lowndes recommends in How to Talk to Anyone that you practice putting others at ease. Since most people worry about being liked, showing people that you like them creates easeful social interactions. This can also open doors to opportunities you’d otherwise miss out on.)

To develop this realistic perspective, learn to read people. Do so by dropping your preconceptions and observing people. Since we present our best faces in public, Greene recommends spending a few months learning to see through that mask and grasp someone’s true character. He gives three tactics:

• Tactic #1: Observe how he communicates. Greene explains that people reveal their emotions, attitude, and beliefs in how they communicate. Observe a person’s tone of voice, choice of words, and body language.
• Tactic #2: Step into his shoes. Imagine how he feels and look for commonalities like shared emotional pains—these will give you a better sense of who he is.
• Tactic #3: Observe his behavior. Pay attention to how he behaves in every area of life, such as how he acts around his superiors and his spouse. Observe his level of discipline and work ethic. Each of these hints further at who he is and why.

Body Language Tells All

In How to Talk to Anyone, Leil Lowndes argues body language and nonverbal cues communicate much of what there is to know about someone. Within the first few seconds of seeing someone, we typically judge their personality type, levels of self-confidence, and social status—and these impressions are often accurate. In addition to Greene’s observational techniques, consider Lowndes’s tactics for creating a positive first impression:

• Stand with good, relaxed posture. Appearing confident and open makes you look approachable, and it also helps you feel more sure of yourself.

• Make eye contact. Lowndes says that prolonged eye contact signals interest, and it can encourage attraction. However, use this with caution: Aggressive eye contact can come off as arrogant or weird.

• Pretend you’re already good friends with the other person. Lowndes says that this helps you relax and send positive signals automatically.

Find a Mentor

While self-directed learning can take you far, Greene asserts that finding a mentor will accelerate and enrich your learning. Attract a mentor by appealing to her self-interest: According to Greene, mentors are often busy and won’t mentor just anyone. Demonstrate that you’ll do unglamorous work—such as organizational and administrative tasks—and that you have discipline and drive.

Mentorship has three major benefits, according to Greene:

• Benefit #1: Inheritance of knowledge, experience, and spirit. A mentor passes on to you her years of experience and creative development. You’ll also receive the accumulation of wisdom that she gained from her mentor.
• Benefit #2: Direct guidance. A one-on-one relationship allows a mentor to tailor her instruction to your needs. She can teach with nuance and precision, transmitting her technical knowledge and the spirit of her craft in a way that books or large classes can’t.
• Benefit #3: Enriched learning. Greene explains that the mentor-mentee relationship creates an emotional connection that enriches the learning process. When you (the mentee) feel emotionally invested, you’ll learn more deeply—and when your mentor feels emotionally invested, she’ll teach more passionately.

Potential Pitfalls of Mentorship

Mentorship can be powerful, but everything has pros and cons. The Harvard Business Review describes five signs that might indicate bad advice from a mentor:

• Bias toward his preferences—In other words, he may be biased toward shaping you to be like him and encourage choices similar to his, rather than tailoring advice to you.

• Self-interest—Consciously or not, a mentor might encourage choices that benefit him, such as remaining in a position over which he has influence.

• Incompatible risk tolerance—If you and your mentor have a different appetite for risk, he might encourage or discourage choices conversely to your own opinions.

• Mismatched expertise—You might end up with a mentor who has little knowledge about a path you want to take, and he may struggle to help you reach your goals.

• Inattentiveness—Because the mentor has more power, he might not take the time to get to know you well. Because of this, his advice might not fit you as well as it could.

None of this is reason to avoid mentorship altogether. Instead, remind yourself that a mentor’s word is not infallible. Mentors can give bad advice or make mistakes, so always think for yourself as well as going to a mentor for help.

Once you’ve learned enough, step out of your mentor’s shadow. Stay long enough to absorb her wisdom, spirit, and expertise, but do not remain so long that you grow comfortable or complacent. Some mentors will happily support your growth, while others may resent your departure. In either case, reflect on what you’ve learned and set off in your own direction.

(Shortform note: The Harvard Business Review also recommends ending a mentor-mentee relationship once it’s run its course. If you’ve learned all you can and/or the relationship no longer has good rapport, consider moving on. To do so, reflect on what you’ve learned and where you’ll go next, then express your gratitude to your mentor and make a clean break.)

Stage #2: Creative Independence

Once you’ve completed your foundational training, it’s time to step out into the world. In this section, we’ll explain the second stage of mastery: creative independence.

In this stage of mastery, you begin to pursue your own inclinations. You’ve built a solid foundation of skills and knowledge, and you can now apply them to develop your ideas—whether you want to explore a new form of art or a scientific theory. In doing so, you’ll gain recognition and start to make a name for yourself.

To achieve creative independence, Greene advises that you avoid becoming rigid. After years of foundational training, you might settle into learned conventions and familiar ways of thinking that reduce your creativity. Prevent this stagnation by taking the three steps to cultivate a creative mind: Commit to a creative project, pursue it to fruition, and persist through emotional obstacles.

Curate Your Influences

In Steal Like An Artist, Austin Kleon suggests amplifying your creativity by surrounding yourself with art that you love. In his view, there’s no such thing as a wholly original idea—all artists are influenced by others. While this may seem unfortunate, Kleon recommends embracing that you don’t need to be original, and you can instead focus on what you love.

To curate your influences, fill your studio or workspace with art from artists that inspire you—records, paintings, posters, music, or whatever else. Further, Kleon suggests copying the work of artists you love to learn how they created it and practice your technique. For instance, you might deep-dive into the portfolio of your favorite painter, studying her work and figuring out how she does it. Then, what you’ve learned will enrich your own process and repertoire of techniques.

Cultivate a Creative Mind

According to Greene, achieving creative independence requires you to develop a certain kind of mind—a flexible, explorative mind that combines childlike wonder with the experience and skills from your foundational training. He explains the three types of mind we can have as we mature:

• Mind #1: The child’s mind. In childhood, we’re naturally open and bright-eyed. Children unashamedly ask unusual, piercing questions about things that adults take for granted—such as why the sky is blue. Greene says the child’s mind embraces wonder and openness, but it lacks experience or practical skills.
• Mind #2: The conditioned mind. As we age, we gain skills and experience, and we’re conditioned by our cultures to look at the world in a certain way. We become more experienced, yet also more conventional and prone to rigid, uncreative thinking. Such an adult might scoff and dismiss a child’s question as naive and silly.
• Mind #3: The creative mind. The rare few—masters—combine the wonder and openness of children with the experience and knowledge of adults. This produces a mind that can think freely and execute with discipline—that is, a master can produce highly creative ideas and has the discipline to act on them.

Could Myelination Cause a Rigid Mind?

While Greene argues for the existence of three types of mind, he doesn’t provide any research to support his claim. However, his assertion that the mind becomes rigid over time might follow from the fact that regularly used neural pathways undergo myelination.

Every time you perform an action, the corresponding neurons, or brain cells, send signals to each other along neural pathways via fibers called axons. The axons are wrapped in a fatty insulating tissue called myelin, which accelerates transmission speed. The more you practice a skill, the more myelinated those axons become, and the more effortlessly you’ll perform the action. For instance, well-myelinated neural pathways for soccer yield second-nature soccer skills—in other words, they become automatic.

When a daily routine becomes automatic, we call it a habit. We often carry out our habits unconsciously, taking them for granted as “who we are,” even if we haven’t consciously examined where those habits came from. What Greene warns against is the crystallization of these habits; in the brain, they become heavily myelinated, thus hard not to perform.

Commit to a Creative Project

The first step in cultivating a creative mind is to commit to a creative project. Any master has a project that calls to them. Find what you’re naturally drawn to in your field—a project you feel like you’re meant for—by listening to your inner sense of direction. Feeling deeply connected to the project helps you stay committed when things get tough.

Greene recommends finding this project by reflecting on the disagreements you have with the existing paradigm in your field. Creativity means pushing boundaries, so finding an opportunity to challenge accepted answers can lead to highly creative work.

(Shortform note: In The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin argues that staying true to your personal style is crucial to success, even if it goes against the accepted wisdom. In his view, honoring your style grounds you and sustains your passion for the skill. When Waitzkin was forced by a disciplinarian chess teacher to play in a way that went against his intuition, he fell out of love with the game. Later, he found his passion in tai chi, a martial art that allowed him to express his chess intuition in a wholly new way.)

Keep Your Mind Flexible

As you pursue your project, practice stretching your mind to remain creative. According to Greene, our minds naturally tighten up over time—that is, we settle into certain ways of thinking. However, sticking with what you know isn’t creativity. Greene offers several practices for keeping your mind flexible:

Practice #1: Sit with uncertainty. When faced with difficult questions or uncertainties, patiently ponder the unknown and remain open to all possibilities. Taking the time to consider every angle surfaces novel ideas and prevents you from recycling familiar answers as a shortcut.

(Shortform note: In Contemporary Psychotherapy, Diana Voller writes of “negative capability” as the ability to remain in the mystery of the unknown and to allow uncertainty to persist. She argues that while this is likely easier for certain personality types, you can develop it by engaging with the big questions—things like “what is the purpose of art?” or “what does it mean to contribute to the world?” These questions demand well-thought-out answers, so you’ll need to wade through uncertainty to reach worthwhile conclusions.)

Practice #2: Stimulate chance associations. Greene explains that creative ideas often come from chance associations of seemingly unrelated ideas. Create the conditions for fortuitous associations by regularly relaxing: Our best ideas often come to us when we loosen up, since the mind can defocus and wander freely.

(Shortform note: In Steal Like An Artist, Austin Kleon corroborates Greene’s advice: He suggests setting aside regular time for hobbies and allowing yourself to feel bored. Hobbies can spur new connections—for instance, sketching can improve your ability to visualize a work-related project. Feeling bored allows your mind to wander, so that you find ideas you otherwise wouldn’t encounter.)

Practice #3: Iterate your ideas. According to Greene, masters alternate between working on their ideas and testing what they’ve worked out. For example, a scientist might observe something—such as gravity—and develop an initial theory, then test it to validate her ideas.

(Shortform note: In Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed recommends learning and innovating through trial and error, much like Greene’s advice above. Syed argues that mistakes show you where and how your ideas are wrong, thus revealing what you need to do to improve. Each time you learn from a mistake, you take a step forward. In fact, Syed argues that this is the basis of all learning—that is, mistakes are intrinsic to the learning process.)

Practice #4: Use all your senses. Greene explains that many of our senses are stronger than language-based thinking. Visual memory is stronger than linguistic memory, and drawing, visualizing, and diagramming your ideas can spark creative associations and improve your mental model of the ideas. In addition, some masters used scents, sounds, or colors to stimulate them.

(Shortform note: One study suggests that synaesthetes—people who experience synaesthesia, or sensory mixing—have a greater ability to form creative associations. For example, some synaesthetes associate visual input with sound—seeing colors when you hear music, or vice versa—so they can produce creative audio-visual media, such as music videos. This supports Greene’s notion that diverse sensory input bolsters creativity.)

Create a Major Insight

According to Greene, past masters all reached their highest achievements by pushing through intense creative tension and, ultimately, letting go to allow the solutions to arise. He outlines this way of reaching a major insight as follows:

1. The aspiring master first gathers ideas and experiments, before deciding on her direction.

2. She then pursues her work with intense focus, using various strategies such as those in the previous section.

3. Due to this intense focus and the natural doubts and struggles of creative works, she builds toward a point of very high tension. At this point, she struggles to complete her work.

4. Greene asserts that she must step away from the work and rest. By getting away from the source of her tension, she allows her mind space to loosen up and freely associate the ideas she’s been working with. Then, her mind can synthesize the ultimate solution to her work.

This process of working through a peak of tension, Greene says, is what led masters like Einstein—who allegedly gave up on his project just before finding the solution—to do their greatest works.

(Shortform note: In Steal Like An Artist, Austin Kleon recommends using tension and limitations to improve your work. Giving yourself fewer options encourages resourcefulness, because you have less to work with. For instance, you might try to compose a song with only three notes.)

Overcome Emotional Obstacles

As Greene explains, performing creative work in a public arena means you’ll come under scrutiny. Self-doubt and inner tension are part and parcel of the creative life, and you can navigate them by watching for the following traps:

• Obstacle #1: Cynicism. As we learn and gain experience, many people grow cynical and believe they’ve seen it all. Avoid this by embracing wonder and remaining humble.
• Obstacle #2: Self-importance. Don’t let praise go to your head. Instead, focus on your creative process, and counterbalance praise by regularly critiquing your own work.
• Obstacle #3: Dependence. When you become independent, you might flounder and seek outside approval. To avoid this, become self-reliant and set your own standards.
• Obstacle #4: Mental rigidity. Greene explains that creativity requires constant fluctuation between intense focus and relaxed optimism. Avoid fixating on either extreme, and learn to focus or relax as needed.
• Obstacle #5: Impatience. Significant creative work takes time and effort, and it’s easy to get impatient. Instead, do your best every day, and work patiently toward your goals.

More Obstacles to Mastery

In Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment, George Leonard similarly describes 13 pitfalls that can knock you off the path to mastery. Like Greene, he cites laziness (impatience), ego (self-importance), and excessive seriousness (mental rigidity). He adds a few others:

• Being overly goal-oriented—While reaching milestones does matter, you need to keep your eyes on the path to get there.

• Over- or under-competitiveness—Competition motivates us to refine our skills to ever-greater heights, but focusing excessively on first place will make you egotistical.

• Reward-seeking—People tend to stop trying when they get a reward, like a medal or recognition. In other words, rewards can make you complacent.

• Inconsistency—If you lack routines, you’ll have a harder time showing up for practice and making steady progress.

Mastery

After spending years developing your creative independence, you’ll eventually achieve mastery. According to Greene, mastery comes about when you merge rational thinking with sophisticated intuition—using your experience and learned skills as well as your openness and intuition to explore novel ideas and thoroughly work them out.

However, Greene argues, Western culture often fails to recognize this powerful combination because it esteems rationality above other forms of thinking and mythologizes high-level intuition:

• Rational thinking involves laying out the steps you took—showing your work so that others can scrutinize your process and conclusions. We consider this valid thinking because it’s easy to show how you got from A → B and replicate the process.
• However, high-level creative insights can’t be explained so easily. They depend on complex, nonlinear intuition and lack clear steps from A → B. As a result, people attribute such insights to mystical forces like genius or talent.

Intuition Is Fallible

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman argues that we have two cognitive systems: System 1 represents quick, intuitive judgments, and System 2 represents slow, deliberative reasoning. This model mirrors Greene’s articulation of how masters create—they use both the instinctive snap decisions of System 1 and the meticulous reasoning of System 2.

However, Kahneman emphasizes that these systems are prone to error. System 1 functions on heuristics—that is, it references known patterns and solutions to help us make judgments, but these often shortcut the full complexity of a situation. If System 2 uncritically accepts System 1’s input, you’re likely to err. Keep this in mind, and try to reason through your ideas when you’ve had plenty of rest—stress makes System 2 more prone to biased thinking.

In this section, we’ll explain how a master reaches this high-level mental skillfulness, and how it gives him a broader perspective of his field.

Intuition Comes From Experience

Greene explains that high-level intuition is a result of the brain’s ability to develop new instincts. Like other animals, humans used to depend on our instincts to swiftly and effectively navigate the world. As we evolved, we began to use reason and abstract thinking to learn more about our environments.

Unlike instinct, knowledge gained through reasoning is at first slow and ineffective—you’ll make mistakes when, for instance, you learn to shoot a bow or track deer. However, learned skills gain the speed and accuracy of instincts with enough experience. When you study a field or skill for a long time, you develop an intuitive feel for it—gaining “instincts” for math, art, or writing. With that intuition, you can make quick, accurate judgments and freely explore the environment in which you think, work, and create.

(Shortform note: In The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin explains that once you’ve practiced a skill for long enough, it becomes second nature. He calls this “form to leave form”: Start with a single element of your skill, such as dribbling a soccer ball. Practice it in isolation—doing that and nothing else. Start slowly and develop good form, then repeat it slowly until you can execute the skill with ease. Gradually speed it up, and you’ll master that element of the skill. Then, you can combine it with others.)

Reason Can Validate Intuitions

While her insights come from this well-developed intuition, the master also uses reason to work them out. Greene writes that coming to the insight is the first step—validating it is the second.

• In the sciences, a master would use tests and other methods to gather evidence, investigate her hunches, and develop a valid explanation of what she first understood intuitively.
• In the arts, a master would take his insight and see if it’ll work in reality. Until he works that out, it’ll remain an idea. For example, a musician might hear beautiful music in his head, but then he needs to figure out how to play it.

Testing Is the Key to Validating Ideas

Greene stops short of explaining specifically how to use reason to validate your ideas, but in Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed offers a few techniques. In his view, the key is to thoroughly test your ideas with reliable methods that give you objective feedback:

In the sciences: A randomized control trial (RCT) is the gold standard for testing a hypothesis. An RCT isolates the effect of an experimental variable by comparing it with a control group—for instance, you’d give coffee to one group and a coffee-like placebo to a second group, not telling them which is which. The difference between the groups’ results tells you what the coffee did.

In creative fields such as art or entrepreneurship: Creators can test their ideas by releasing a minimum viable product (MVP) to the public. An MVP is a cost-effective, bare-bones prototype of your idea that’s meant to demonstrate its potential. Use an MVP to gather feedback, and you’ll know whether to scrap or improve your ideas.

Masters See the “Flow” of Their Fields

Greene argues that with high-level intuition and reason, a master grasps her field as a whole, and she becomes attuned to its “dynamic.” In other words, she sees how the parts fit together and flow as one whole, and she intuitively senses the dynamic, evolving form of it all.

The master develops this sense by spending long years working hard at her craft. She studies and absorbs all aspects of the field—the leading mental models and paradigms of thought, the procedures and techniques, the social and power dynamics, as well as the history and present state of things.

Imagine a seasoned copywriter who’s been at it for two decades. She knows it all—she’s mastered the fundamentals, plus all the nuances and subtleties of writing good copy. She understands human psychology, and the various roles and styles of copywriting. She knows where the field has been, she can see where things are going, and she understands how she fits into the overall business landscape. Altogether, she’s tuned in to the dynamic, evolving state of the field—that is, she sees the forest and the trees, and she navigates them with ease.

Greene argues that as your brain comes to encompass more and more of the patterns and parts that make up your field, your inner landscape of mental models comes to reflect the full complexity of reality. In his view, this means you’re attuned to the “essence” of reality, and you see it more truly than a non-master would.

Ericsson’s “Mental Representations” and Greene’s “Dynamic”

In Peak, K. Anders Ericsson discusses an experiment in which professional and amateur soccer players were asked to predict how a soccer match would develop. They were shown video footage of the match and, when it was paused and hidden, the experimenters asked each player to recount the positions of the players and describe what would most likely happen next.

As expected, the experienced players could make reasonably accurate predictions, while the amateur players were less accurate. Much like Greene describes, the professionals could read the field like a book, tuning into the dynamic, flowing patterns of play. Ericsson attributes this ability to the professionals’ super “mental representations”—in short, they had internalized thorough knowledge of the principles and patterns of soccer, so they could mentally model the flow of play far more accurately than less experienced players, who lacked these mental models.

Mastery Is a Lifelong Journey

Greene explains that time and effort inevitably yield mastery—he asserts that it takes around 20,000 hours. In other words, you’ll get there guaranteed if you put in the hours. (Shortform note: Greene doesn’t provide any research to support this number. In contrast, it simply doubles Malcolm Gladwell’s popular “10,000-hour rule,” which he explains in Outliers.)

However, the time you spend developing mastery must be intense and committed. You can’t just go through the motions, because half-hearted practice yields half-hearted results. Show up with vigor and verve, putting everything you’ve got into your work and taking every opportunity to learn, and you’ll reap far fuller rewards.

(Shortform note: In Peak, K. Anders Ericsson further explains that how you practice makes all the difference—it must be purposeful and deliberate. Like Greene, he stresses the importance of intense focus. He also advises setting clear, specific goals, getting immediate feedback, and stretching your comfort zone in a continual effort to improve.)

In the end, masters actually become “spiritually” younger by living in accord with their creative drive. Such a master has developed his potential and his brain so thoroughly that, as Greene puts it, he comes into contact with reality. In other words, he understands the full complexity of life, growth, and what it takes to master a field, craft, or discipline.

(Shortform note: In Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment, George Leonard explains that part of the master’s youthfulness comes from allowing himself to act the fool—not to be stupid, but to allow and embrace his childlike sense of wonder and “foolish” naivete. Thus, the master is free to make mistakes, explore and experiment with what fascinates him and, over time, remain in contact with that sense of wonder that brings joy and fulfillment to life.)