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Has anyone bypassed the 10,000 hour prerequisite for Mastery? I'm sure there has been some efficient masters who have made achievements worthy of a mastery acclaim. I'm interested to hear how they were more efficient than other masters who had to undergo a 10,000 apprenticeship.

Robert Greene mentions nine contemporary masters, can you think of any others who should have been mentioned? Why should they be mentioned?

Here are a few that come to mind (Michael Jordan - basketball, Steve Jobs - entrepreneur/ inventor, Jack Dorsey - web developer, Bill Gates - technology/ philanthropy, Tony Fadell - engineer, etc.)

Contemporary masters...

Anybody who has spent 15 years working on a specific skillset is a contemporary master, 10 if they spent an hour a day, and even less if they spend more time.

I'll name a few. I guess they deserve to be mentioned because they are at the top of their field...

Warren Buffet, stocks
T Boone Pickens, oil, got a 2nd win on oil speculation
Mark Cuban, Broadcast.com's sale to yahoo
Sam Raimi, director
Steven Spielberg, director
...there's a bunch of master directors. directors reach their prime around 40, and if they started at 20's then they had 20 years of practice
Mark Zuckerberg, he works 15 hours a day
Tom Monaghan, pizza expert, founder of Dominos
Elon Musk, Tesla Motors works 90 hours a week on his projects

The dark side of mastery :
- al-Qaeda's terrorism
- Adolf Hitler's Nazism
- Ku Klux Klan's racism
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If only Hitler was on the good side . He was brilliant.

Mohammad wrote: "The dark side of mastery :
- al-Qaeda's terrorism
- Adolf Hitler's Nazism
- Ku Klux Klan's racism "

That's a little vague. Please explain. I don't understand. Perhaps you meant mastery of the dark side?

Raphael wrote: "Contemporary masters...

Anybody who has spent 15 years working on a specific skillset is a contemporary master, 10 if they spent an hour a day, and even less if they spend more time.

I'll nam..."

Surely where you direct your attention is relevant. For example, Buffet has been in the business game for more that 15 years. Yet there is no single skill he has been honing since being in business calls for a generalist set of skills. A painter, on the other hand, is specialised. She would paint for 15 years and become a master in the art of painting. Greene didn't really go over the specifics, do you think the concept applies to generalist professions in the same way it does to specialist ones?

Greetings Joshua,

I guess by specific skill I mean something done with a larger more specialized aim as with just business calls and similar actions there wouldn't be much to master. That would kind of be like mastering a certain brush stroke instead of trying to become the best at painting whatever kind of paintings.

I'd argue though that Buffet's field is pretty specialized in that it takes a certain aptitude and gut instinct to consistently make Buffet level returns using the amount of money he does. You could say he mastered making X billion dollars, or managing X billions which would involve the skill sets that can be built upon such as analyzing data, analyzing situations, gathering knowledge, and judging and managing people.

(On another note. I thought Outliers was much better. If we compared the two, Outliers was all about the once in a generation type people who master things based on talent and managing time in a way that the skillets needed to be a master is constantly worked on)

Also I guess if I were to speak for Mohammed it wouldn't really be master of the dark side.

-Al-Qaeda's terrorism. Mastering running a terrorist organization. And the master would be Osama Bin laden and maybe some of his high ranking associates.

- Adolf Hitler's Nazism. That would be Hitler leading the Nazi regime. The mastery involved getting to and becoming the leader that he was.

- Ku Klux Klan's racism. I'm not sure where this one would fit in.

Thanks Raphael,

I see where you are coming from. A skillset as defined by the problem it solves. So becoming a master of dealing with a certain problem rather than mastering the skills themself. Makes complete sense.

I enjoyed Outliers too, Malcolm is clearly a better storyteller than Greene. That said I did enjoy the little anecdotes of Masters throughout 'Mastery'. The Wright brothers in particular.

Anyway, thanks for responding.

Also, Can anyone recommend any good books about the Wright Brothers?

Hey Josh,

Ah, that makes more sense than could've said it.

Do you like other Robert Greene books? I overhyped 48 laws of power for myself, but I'll try not to spoil anything if you haven't read it yet.

Wright Brothers. I have no clue what the right approach would be but I saw this talk on TV from a guy who wrote 'Birdmen' and thought there was good stuff about the Wright Brothers. The lecture was good enough for me.



The guy in the lecture, if I'm remembering right, enjoys responding to emails about this kind of stuff. I think they were running out of time and he was telling people to email him or something like that.

Thank you.

Movie looks a little long so I pocketed it and will get to it in due course.

Havn't read any other greene books, wasn't too impressed with his writing. . I like to binge read in blocks of themes so I'm sure I'll get round to 'Power' in time.

Once again, Thanks for the video.

Sheikh Mahmud Khalil Al Qari is a Saudi Qari (reciter of the Qur'an) who makes me feel calm . and he is an example of mastery :

A Chinese mastery :


A sport mastery :


A Saudi paratrooper :

Lance wrote: "Has anyone bypassed the 10,000 hour prerequisite for Mastery? I'm sure there has been some efficient masters who have made achievements worthy of a mastery acclaim. I'm interested to hear how they ..."

I highly recommend that you read 'Talent is overrated' by Geoff Colvin. He analyses very deeply this concept of '10,000 initial hours' and he describes what separates world-class performers from people who practise something for 30+ years and never get even close to excellence and expertise.
He conceptualizes it very precisely, it is a very good book, one of my all time favourites.
If you want, I can tell you what's (according to G. Colvin) key to success (and that 'secret ingredient' that makes all the difference), but I don't want to spoil the excitement of find it out on your own, if you'd actually really want to read the book :P