Habits and Mastery
On Names and Purposes, Habits and Mastery, Reading recommendations, Build to Adapt and What I'm Doing.
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Names and Purposes
Name
I have renamed this newsletter to ‘Read. Learn. Enjoy.’ to match the tag line of my blog. It feels more positive to me than the earlier name chosen in the spur of the moment.
New avatar, same content.
As Shakespeare says in the play Romeo and Juliet:
What's in a name?
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Purpose
The newsletter (and also my blog) is about “Content that never expires.”
The content of this letter will remain relevant whether you read it tomorrow or a decade later.
I intend to live and breathe this purpose. If I slip up, let me know by writing to “newsletter@reading.guru”.
Habits Create the Foundation for Mastery
Decades back I read the classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.
Two ideas from the book stayed with me.
The first idea is about the Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern.
The second idea is below:
We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Habits create the foundation for Mastery. They have the potential to transform your life.
Habits
Habit is a regular act of doing something, usually a small task or a decision.
Habits will form whether you want them or not. Once formed they are particularly hard to give up.
Habits are instinctive. The action or decision is automated, often carried out without explicitly thinking about it, thus reducing cognitive load on the brain.
Habits compound like compound interest.
Habits create your identity. You are what you repeat. Not what you do once in a blue moon.
True behaviour change occurs only with an identity change. With identity-based habits, you start by focusing on who you wish to become. You don’t want to just read a book, you want to become a ‘reader’.
Success is the product of daily habits – not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.
Mastery
Mastery is comprehensive knowledge and skill in a particular subject or activity.
Mastery is being unique, being world-class, being only one of a kind. Mastery is putting your unique stamp on everything you do. Mastery is Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps.
Mastery is an acquired skill and it can be acquired by anyone.
Robert Greene, in his book Mastery, articulates three steps to building Mastery in your chosen field.
Apprenticeship – where you learn by doing.
Creative-Active - where you start questioning the conventional wisdom of your field and start reshaping it to reflect your natural instincts.
Mastery - where you develop the intuitive ability to understand the causal relationships between events and things and use it to create the future you desire.
Habits Create the Foundation for Mastery
Mastery requires practice. Repetitions. Iterations.
Bruce Lee says:
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once.
I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
It takes tremendous willpower to practice a kick 10,000 times. But repetition is boring.
The greatest threat to Mastery is boredom.
Habits solve the boredom problem and get you comfortable doing something repetitively.
Habits that become second-nature – where you do something without realizing you are doing it, where the habit has become instinctive – provide a natural foundation for developing Mastery.
The journey from mediocrity to Mastery then is simple:
Do.
Learn.
Refine.
Repeat.
Repeat 10,000 times. It doesn’t need to take 10,000 hours.
Reading Recommendation
Two reading recommendations relevant to Habits and Mastery.
1. Atomic Habits by James Clear
The author’s advice is to use the book as an operating manual. The book is indeed filled with practical nuances and techniques to form new good habits or break bad ones.
One practical technique is the Two-minute rule.
When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.
Once you’ve started doing it, it is much easier to continue doing it. Starting a new habit should not feel like a challenge. The actions that follow can be challenging, but the first two minutes should be easy. Never start something with an hundred hour upfront commitment. Try out the Two-minute rule for yourself.
Often we only hear what we understand. The Two-minute rule resonated with me possibly because I use a variation of it for my decisions.
You can read my review and summary of the book here.
James Clear writes a blog with articles and book summaries. It inspired me to write and put up book summaries on my blog.
2. Mastery by Robert Greene
To express our uniqueness, we must first learn the rules of our field - and then be able to change those rules completely.
Mastery provides a practical guide to mastering anything and then to start living by your own rules.
I haven’t written a summary of this book. But you can read a short summary here, or a longer one here.
Robert Greene is better known for his first book, The 48 Laws of Power, that is sometimes accused as being amoral.
One of the 48 laws is reproduced below.
LAW 38
Think As You Like But Behave Like Others
If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them.They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior.
It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch.
Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.
Book Reviews and Summaries
You can read 40+ book reviews and book summaries on my blog Reading.Guru.
Summaries added this week:
Three popular reviews and summaries:
Poems for the Soul by Sanober Khan – Yes. My review of the first full poetry book I have ever read is also the most popular one!
The Zurich Axioms by Max Gunther – A book that challenges conventional wisdom about investing, money and risk.
Freedom from the Known by J Krishnamurti – A book about freeing yourself from the past and the known.
More to come.
Build to Adapt
A reader of this letter shared a beautiful article by Prakash Iyer, author and motivational speaker, published in a recent edition of the Business World magazine.
The key message is to build things (career, business, life) for adaption, not just for survival.
Intelligence is not the survival of the strongest, but survival of the most adaptable.
Read. Learn. Enjoy.
A picture of The Bridge on the River Choluteca
Do you have a timeless anecdote like Build to Adapt to share? Write to me at “newsletter@reading.guru”.
What I’m Doing
This section is about what I’m doing now and a hint of what’s coming up next.
Now
Reading 📖
The Way of Zen by Alan W. Watts
I am continuing my reading safari on Philosophy. I avoided reading philosophy for two decades, but now catching up for the last year or so.
Thinking 🤔
To seek is to lose it.
- Alan W. Watts, The Way of Zen
I love quotes and tweets as they represent condensed wisdom reduced to the absolute essence.
Writing ✍️
I have written weekly so far. Aim for next year is to write daily!
I published two articles this week.
Freedom is Not Free - A longer article about the thoughts from last week’s edition.
Habits Create the Foundation for Mastery - A longer article of the thought included in this edition.
I am also working on a note-taking system for the newsletter using Notion.so and experimenting with time slots to write regularly. It is 5.30am in India as I write these words. Hopefully it will build into a habit.
Next
A hint of what’s coming up in the next few editions.
Mastery is about mastering a specific field or niche. What is a niche and how to identify one?
11 Aug 2020 is my blog’s first birthday. I’ve learnt a lot in the last one year. The key is building right habits that lay the foundation for mastery. It is a journey.
Thank you for reading till the end.
A request - please use the heart-shaped Like icon ❤️ at the top to let me know if you liked this edition. It means a lot to me.
Until next week,
- Satyajit
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