Genghis Khan. One of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen. You may picture him and the Mongol hordes as savages who plundered Asia and Europe, and to a great extent, you would be right. He was no saint. However, he was also pretty smart in how he managed the conquered territories. He learned and absorbed.

He was able to put his ego aside and understand that he and his army were not the best at everything. With each conquered nation, he would take the best, absorb it, and adapt the way he ruled. He might be ruthless, but his greatness didn’t come from that. It stemmed from his willingness to learn and listen, and to empower those he encountered.

If one of the most powerful men on Earth could listen, so can you.

In Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday notes that “An amateur is defensive. The professional finds learning to be enjoyable; they like being challenged and humbled, and engage in education as an ongoing and endless process.” It is only by being willing to step outside of our comfort zone and even enjoy it that we can learn. If you are always the smartest person in the room, there is nothing that challenges you to learn more. You may even succumb to the impression that you know everything.

When you deliberately put yourself into the uncomfortable role of someone who knows the least, you challenge yourself to learn and to become better.

Start With The Basics

The devil is in the details. To excel at anything, you must start with the basics. By instilling the necessary routines and discipline in the basic tasks, the bigger achievements materialize on their own. Adopting simple, basic routines will pave the way to excellence.

Let’s say you want to build a great soccer team. Where do you start? With basics. And I mean real basics. Players need to show up for practice consistently, on time, and give their best every single training session. They need to be professional in their approach, which means having their gear in pristine order, living healthily even outside of the practice, and helping each other to be better.

Then you break down the play into smaller segments and have a set of basic drills that each player needs to master. It’s called deliberate practice. If everyone on the team cares about the details, focuses on them, and improves one small step at a time, the team improves, and the results will take care of themselves. It is not easy, but if you don’t take care of the basics, you will quickly plateau, and progress will be a constant struggle.

It is like trying to read the book without knowing individual letters. You may learn how the words look on the page, but it will be a slow process. If you took care of the basics and learned the alphabet first, you would have a stable base on which you can build your reading skills.

Mastery Is About Listening, Effort, And Perseverance

Mastery is not about talent and brilliance. It’s about listening, making an effort, and persevering. Some say that to achieve a master’s level in anything, you need to spend ten thousand hours of deliberate practice. The number doesn’t matter. Whether it is five thousand, ten, or twenty, it is a lot of time. You can’t be impatient. You need to be humble, consistent, and persevere.

Mastery is a lifelong pursuit. You can never say, “I practiced for ten thousand hours. I’m done. I’m a master now.” There is always something more you can do. There is always something you can practice to get better.

Mastery Is About Focus

You get more of what you focus on. You will accomplish things where you put your energy in. If you put your energy and focus into learning to play piano, you will eventually become a pianist. If you put your energy and focus into watching TV, you will become a viewer. If you put your energy and focus into nothing, you will become nothing.

You may think that you are working hard on mastering a topic. In reality, you may procrastinate, spend time on idle chatter, endlessly research things that are not relevant, or practice the wrong things. You may tell yourself that you work hard on the right things.

The reality is that you can’t cheat nature. If you lie to yourself, that’s fine until someone shows up and tests you. Whether it is a test in a school, an interview for a job, or a sports match. Sooner or later, you will have to face the reality that will test whether you truly worked hard on the right things. If you fail, you know that you should have prepared better.

Mastery And Passion

Passion is overrated. Over the last several decades, numerous books have been written about the importance of passion in achieving anything in life and being happy. Many people made a fortune peddling this idea. If you are trying to follow your passion or, even worse, find your passion, and you blame your misfortunes on not being able to do what you are passionate about, you are barking at the wrong tree.

You may say that passion leads to mastery, but it is not the start. It starts with grit. With hard work. With perseverance. Passion comes from purpose. That is how most people who are “passionate” about their work got there. They started doing something. They put in the effort. Over time, they become great at it. And they found purpose in what they are doing. They wouldn’t even describe themselves as passionate, but simply as someone who has a purpose. From the outside, it looks like they are passionate about the topic.

Passion implies a strong emotional attachment to something. However, those “passionate” about their work are often very logical and methodical in the way they got there. It required humility, perseverance, willingness to build a routine, and a lot of deliberate practice. Passion very rarely has anything to do with it.

If You Lead With Passion, You Stop Listening

If you lead with passion, you lead with emotions, with ego, and you ignore logic. That is not a recipe for success. Those who are passionate about something often don’t want to accept that they don’t know enough, they don’t listen to those around them, and they frequently become passionate about something they are not equipped to handle, ultimately leading to failure. Their passion clouds their minds.

The problem with passion is that when you start with it, it often doesn’t lead anywhere. You are passionate about changing the world, so you talk about it a lot, you are making plans, you congregate with like-minded individuals, and you are busy doing things, but somehow you don’t really make any progress. Why? Because progress requires patience and perseverance, doing the boring bits every single day. That is significantly anti-passion. It is those who are less passionate but focused on getting things done that plow through the routine, boring tasks, reach mastery, and achieve results.

Passion drives us to be excited about our cause. We are passionate about stuff. But we need a purpose and the skills to accomplish things. Having a purpose means that we know what we must do, sacrifice, or endure to build the necessary skills and get the results we want.

Alive And Dead Time

Author Robert Greene introduced the concept of Alive time and Dead time. This concept was later adopted by Ryan Holiday. Alive time is when we are learning new things, growing, getting better, and preparing for the future. Dead time is when we passively wait for what comes to us or engage in habits that are to our detriment.

Alive time is when you learn a new language. Dead time is when you watch TV and eat chips.

At any time in your life, you can choose whether to live or not, whether to have alive time or dead time. Whatever your life circumstances, you can always choose how you spend your present moments. Even if you are locked up in a small room, isolated from the outside world, you can still take proactive steps, such as exercising and getting into shape. Or you can just passively lie on your back, waiting for the powers that be to let you out.

When you face adversity, injustice, or unfairness, you may become angry, complain, or experience depression. You can choose a dead time. Or you can let go of what happened and focus on what you can do to get back on your feet. You can choose an alive time. You can choose to get better at something. Anything. You can choose mastery.

Putting It All Together

Chose the alive time and live your life with purpose, mastery, and continuous learning on your mind. Learn to put your ego aside, admit that you don’t know everything, and keep learning. Focus on becoming good at something. Anything.

As you learn, you get better. As you get better, you will become increasingly passionate about it. As you get passionate about it, you will want to spend more time on it. You will be alive. You will have a purpose. You will avoid the dead time. You will flourish.

---

Photo: Generated with Dall-E