Many people with 10–20 years of experience in a given field are no better than people with 2–4 years of experience. This is because once people are “good enough,” they choose to go on “autopilot” and not learn anything new.
In the book “Peak — How to master anything”, Anders Erricson who created the concept of “10,000 hours to mastery”, says the following:
It’s not about spending 10,000 hours but it is how you spend those 10,000 hours that’ll decide on whether you become a true master or not. To become a true master, you must put yourself out there until you have a clear “mental model” of how things work even in complex situations.
For example: In Chess, grand-champions can compete fully blind folded against 10–20 teams simultaneously! To do this, they need to create a mental model of all the various moves across numerous boards simultaneously! That’s mastery!
So how to actually become a true master and get that mental model?
Steps to master anything:
- Set a short-term “incremental” goals: such as wanting to be a world-class software…
