EVER SINCE MALCOLM GLADWELL published Outliers: The Story of Success and loud people could be overheard explaining the 10,000-hour rule at cocktail parties everywhere, the concept of Mastery has really enjoyed a moment. The popularity of his book, in fact, prompted hundreds of others to rehash the same case studies for their own books. Just off the top of my head, I can think of The Talent Code, Mastery, The Art of Mastery, The First Rule of Mastery, The Mastery Manual, and The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery.
In a very short period, it seems, everyone became an expert on expertise.
The more legitimate of those books then served as source material from which James Clear turned himself into a human ChatGPT and synthesized those ideas into what became Atomic Habits. (See: Appendix, “James Clear Has No Ideas.”) This, in turn, inspired a legion of podcasters and keynote speakers to regurgitate those regurgitations into even more derivative regurgitations until discourse on the subject began to resemble an opportunistic game of Telephone. In the process, the original research performed by K. Anders Ericsson got bastardized into picks & shovels that promised people they could be So Good They Can’t Ignore You (to borrow the title of another book in this genre).
Many of these books about Mastery linger over the rigorous routines of elite violinists and chess masters, chronicling the years they spent refining their skills, setting goals, practicing, napping, and practicing some more. The accounts are romantic and inspiring and capable of compelling readers to set goals and take naps just like the pros! And that makes sense. There is a huge appeal to the idea of Mastery. It suggests that your work can speak for itself, that you can control your value in the world, and that with enough skill you can achieve safety and stability in today’s volatile marketplace.
We want to believe these ideas. We want to believe that we get better and more reliable the longer we spend practicing a craft or profession. But, unfortunately, today these notions are getting turned into fantasies. Not very different from the idea of striking gold. Few of the readers who get seduced by them take a moment to zoom out and ask themselves, When was the last time I paid to see a violinist perform? or How much does the average violinist make?
This is to say that despite the appearance of credibility—the research, the case studies—these Mastery-focused works ignore the widening gap between skill and market value. Put another way, modern companies now have very little incentive to place a value upon Mastery or foster it within their employees.
As a result, the concept of Mastery promotes several myths that instead of helping people achieve security, actually make them more vulnerable. These are the myths of skill, experience, and expertise—which I’ll soon deconstruct.