Book Review: Mastery By Robert Greene
This post is not generated, edited or prompted by Artificial Intelligence, so it probably has terrible grammar.
Mastery by Robert Greene uncovers the uncomfortable truth that many masters of their crafts did not arrive at their destinations due to luck but by total and complete commitment to their craft. Spencer, a dairy farmer living in China, Maine who has milked jersey cows in a closed herd since the 70s, describes dairy farming as the ultimate profession. He described dairy farming as the ultimate profession because it is a slow accumulation of very intense decisions. You will not be able to see the true performance of a heifer until 2 + years into her life. If you really break it down you may only be able to see 16 or so generations of cows if you farm for 60+ years. To create the greatest dairy cow takes complete commitment to your craft in regards to thinking towards the future. I recently have started to think 10, 20, even 50 years in the future. I have started to think about how I would like my life to look and how I can start preparing for a life of farming that is 50 years in the future. How can I set up my farming operation in a way that makes it easiest to continue when I am six feet under? This sounds easy, put things in trusts, don’t carry lots of bad debt and start running a resilient business model that can make the future generation money. However, after giving my life to a piece of land and herd of cattle I know it may be painful seeing them change over from my management to someone else’s.
Mastery by Robert Greene has also put into perspective how more work I have ahead of me to become a master dairy farmer. On paper, after completing the Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship I have accumulated a total of 4,000 hours of dairy farming and dairy farming related activities. Therefore, according to the 10,000 hour requirement I am not even halfway to mastery. If you are reading this, think about what you are accumulating hours in - you could be unknowingly becoming a master at scrolling on tik tok / social media or a master at talking poorly to oneself. I for one have probably spent 10,000 hours procrastinating getting important things done. This is why it is so hard to break old habits. We have legitimately, by the rule of 10,000 hours, whether we like it or not become masters at things we do all the time. This book has made me realize that one of the fundamental things of our universe is the slow accumulation of things that later become huge things. This can vary from a slow onset of muscle gained from 2 years in the gym to the accumulation of topsoil over millions of years of nutrient cycling. At the end of the day our small decisions eventually become our entire reality.
