Mastery is a delusion

“It takes 10,000 hours to master anything.”

Is that really true?

It seems that today everyone is obsessed with attaining an elusive mastery. I was reflecting on that one night and realized that it’s not feasible to truly master anything in the sense that one has learned everything there is to learn. Even the masters we know have always been committed to continual improvement.

“I don’t count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they are the only ones that count.” — Muhammad Ali

The idea of stacking good days on good days is not a new discovery or something that only applies to specific situations. There is a famous Hadith that illustrates this point:

“If two days are the same, the second one is a loss.”

So as entrepreneurs and leaders, our aim isn’t to attain mastery but rather to focus on adopting a mindset of continual improvement. If the only thing that we can control is ourselves then, what am I doing today to make it better than yesterday?

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