Mastery Demands Payment in Life Units

Let’s think a bit about the 10,000 hour rule.

It says that mastery in a serious discipline demands a minimum focused investment of around 10,000 hours in deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice means - finding benchmark behaviors, breaking them down, and performing them consistently to get nearer to perfection.

10,000 hours roughly breaks down like this:

• 9 years of effort, given 3 hours per day, 365 days a year
• 13 years of effort, given 2 hours per day, 365 days a year
• 27 years of effort, given 1 hour per day, 365 days year

These are staggering numbers - when we look at how short our lives are.

Half our lives - we are either sleeping or working on maintenance tasks.

The other half - we’re trapped in various maladies and difficulties

• and rarely give sufficient time and energy to deliberately get better at something.

For most humans - mastering even 1 serious discipline is a lifetime achievement.

The vast majority of humans reach their graves having mastered not a single serious discipline in their lives.

That means, the vast majority of humans have never experienced peak performance within themselves, they have never known what it means to fulfill even a portion of their real potentials.

Why should we care about “Mastery”?

It may sound like a vague word invented by people with too much time sometimes on their hands.

But really - it isn’t.

There are two sides to “Mastery”.

First - the less important side: The social side.

A masterful performance is usually judged in a social context.

In any era - we have the top scientists, sportsmen, politicians, actors, and so on.

We have the historical greats, Newton, Einstein, Beethoven, and on and on.

We all know their names.

They were much, much better than their contemporaries. Some of them were better than anyone ever in their fields of expertise.

It is sort of a social peak - and masters are at the top - in their areas of expertise.

But as I said - there are two sides to “Mastery”, and the social side - of being at the top of list is of lesser importance.

The More Important Side of “Mastery”

The more important side of “Mastery” is that - it hits at the core of what it means to be a human.

You may look at the animal kingdom - you’ll find no adult animal practicing getting better in any area of life, and trying to master it.

There is no such effort.

In humans - we can see a higher state and try for it. We understand this term called “potential”.

You know that if you keep practicing, and trying, you will eventually get better - and the experience of life will change for you.

That is the key driver for Mastery.

And most importantly? The experience of mastery cannot be bought or sold in the market.

Once you’ve mastered something - the experience you get out of it - is solely your own. When performing - what you go through psychologically cannot be counted through numbers.

Nobody can buy your experience. Sure, they may hire you, they may associate with you - but nobody can buy the experience of mastery.

One struggles for a decade or more - and pay a hefty price in time, effort and emotions – all for a simple experience of mastery.

And no rich person, or a powerful person, can buy or grab it for themselves.

The only currency through which mastery can be obtained is life itself.

What Mastery Stands For in Human Life

The desire and effort for mastery in any area of human life stands for intelligence, the human capacity for envisioning better states, and working for it.

It is waking up the inner human within the animal, and to help it guide towards a higher potential.

That is what Mastery means, and it is worth having a few words in our vocabularies to remind ourselves of such a great potential.