At first, I thought “Mastery” by Robert Greene is probably just another self-help book, but I was wrong.For the first time, I could appreciate every word written in that book. I felt like I was really reading and understanding something.

There are few takeaways from this book. To be a master, you need to

• Be patient and persistent. Hardships will come and go.
• Keep focus on the goal
• Start small. Don’t get yourself overwhelmed
• Apart from improving knowledge in your preferred area, do learn from other areas as it can “spark” ideas.

Notes

I really like the last takeaway. And below is my understanding of this point:

• A master is not an expert (by some pre-defined standards). A master is creative and can achieve “impossible” goal.
• By exploring different verticals of study, the brain is able to generate more associations. That’s how you end up in “seeing things from different angles”.
• Usually, by going deeper and deeper in 1 vertical, certain associations are strengthened more than others. Hence, whenever you approach a problem, you will link to the strongest association. The risk here is you miss out the “creativity” that could be generated by other associations.
• There’s another advantage of understanding different verticals: empathy. As a Product Manager, I experience it most when stakeholders from different teams are trying to solve a problem. Most of the time, we couldn’t align on the solutions simply because people who have different strong associations “see” a problem differently. Understanding different verticals helps you empathise others.