The only thing you need to do to develop mastery and become sought-after
We’re overloaded with choices.
Good choices, mind, but lots of choices and options, and it’s super duper difficult to know what to do and where to start.
And this makes it much more challenging to make more intimate commitments to singular projects.
At least, this is what your little mind goblin is telling you.
You know very well you’re buying into a thought.
Another unhelpful thought.
You aren’t really encumbered by a ‘chaotic reality.’
The reality is within you. You made it. You made it hard.
And this is why there is a tremendous opportunity here. There is an opportunity when most other humans struggle with their own interpretations of chaos. They allow themselves to slip and to dance with phone notifications from dawn till dusk.
You don’t need to fall prey.
You are the damn, prey. Get it?
When you see the world in this light, mastery is possible again.
Read this quote by Robert Greene (It’s a doozy):
“Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.”
Not a function of talent.
Do you see what this means? It means that getting hot shit great at something specific is open for just about everyone.
I believe talent does play a role, but it’s not as crucial as time and attention.
Why is mastery important? It sets you apart in a sea of competing dancing monkeys. Standing out with value attracts money and attention. These are two things you need if you want freedom.
Do you see?
The reason you see people pull rabbits out of hats in seemingly magical ways is thanks to these two critical ingredients.
Time and attention.
This is time and attention spent actually doing the thing, by the way, not in any consideration of the thing.
They got great at something because they highly valued those two things - and by golly, they made use of them.
This is how you get nine-year-old child prodigies. Their parents made sure they squeezed in an ungodly amount of time and attention, where the child was butt on piano seat, dedicated to getting great at the piano - EARLY in life.
Yes, their talent played a small role. But it’s simply not nearly as big a contributor as actually plinking keys.
People who succeed in uncommon ways do the same thing. They put considerable time and attention into SPECIFIC things, even if those things are hybrids of several things to make a new thing.
...Like making and advertising video courses about microdosing mushrooms for productivity. Or whatever.
But they didn’t do what most do, which is to fire time and attention in three hundred and nine different directions throughout the day.
(Those people believed the lie that they were overwhelmed by choice. No they overwhelmed themselves, dum dums).
You must drop the lie that these thoughts are allowed to have a firm hold on you and your subsequent behaviours.
Tell them to screw off.
Figure out what it is that needs your undivided attention and a significant time commitment.
What ‘field of knowledge’ do you want to master?
What could you pour uncommon amounts of time and energy into that would set you apart, flying higher than any man?
What things do you need to say NO to in order to deepen the YES you have for the primary thing?
The thing that needs you.
How might your life change if you plunged significant amounts of those two weighty commodities (time and attention) into this thing?
Here’s the interesting part in all this.
When you believe you have endless choices, you will overwhelm yourself.
But when you make the often difficult decision to do more with less, you’ll find your life far less overwhelming. Life can be simple this way. Unless you keep buying into those unhelpful thoughts that being somewhere else might be better.
Just remember the quote:
“Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.”
If you want to be a great science writer, spend more time and attention actually writing about science. Not thinking about writing. Not studying. Writing.
Onward.
Thanks for reading.
What if you decided to master writing and make a career out of it over the next decade or two?
My new book shows you how I did it. It’s called ‘The Never-Retired Writer.’
It’s 62 short, actionable chapters on building a writing life that gives you income, freedom, and a body of work that compounds for the rest of your life.
Enjoy!
Alex
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