Why You Never Get Good at Anything

Wisdom from a classic book

The reason you don’t get good at the things you want to get good at isn’t because you suck at life.

I mean, you might, but the types of people who subscribe to this newsletter are generally a cut above the rest, so I doubt it.

The reason you don’t reach your potential is because you don’t understand what the path to mastery looks like.

The Mastery Curve

This image comes from the classic book Mastery by George Leonard.

If you’re an OG who remembers the PUA scene from 15 years ago you probably remember this book.

It’s worth buying and reading the entire thing, but the gist of it is that acquiring skills doesn’t work quite the way people think it does.

What progress looks like

Your skills don’t improve every single day in a straight line.

You spend most of your time on the plateau, where you’re dedicating time and effort towards the skill but you’re not getting any better.

Then you experience a sudden burst of progress. All the hard work you’ve been putting in pays off bigly. Each day is better than the last.

This phase is VERY addicting. The work:payoff ratio is skewed heavily in favor the payoff. You start to feel like you might be a prodigy. You think about becoming a guru.

“I was born for this. Might as well monetize it and teach my ways to the less fortunate. I’m going to start a YouTube channel and write a book.”

Then comes the decline.

You’re still practicing and working hard every day, but your skill level is getting worse.

This is Peak Despair Mode.

Every day you feel like an even bigger loser.

“What’s the point in working hard if I keep getting worse? I was born to lose, I’m not cut out for it. I’m sucking dick for gas money out here. Time to read the writing on the wall and quit before I sink more time/effort/money into this.”

Eventually - assuming you somehow stick with it through the Dark Days of Despair - your skill level stabilizes at a new plateau. The problem? You’re stuck performing at a level that’s MUCH lower than the peak you just barely touched during your hypergrowth phase.

But if you look at the graph, you’ll notice that the new plateau is higher than the previous one.

And the cycle repeats.

You spend an absurdly long amount of time on the new plateau, not improving no matter how much effort you put in. Then you hit another vertical growth phase, then a decline, followed by a new, even higher plateau.

That’s what the Mastery Curve looks like.

If you want to avoid quitting and feeling extreme inner anguish, you need to learn how to measure your progress in terms of plateaus.

Is your current plateau on a higher level than the last one? Keep going. You’re on the right track.

How to deal with it

This concept applies to anything you’re trying to get good at.

Whether it’s building a business, losing weight, playing an instrument, learning a language. It’s all the same.

Most people never make it to their full potential because they can’t emotionally handle the sharp skill decline and/or the long, brutal plateaus.

They think the hypergrowth phase should last forever instead of realizing that it represents a very VERY small percentage of the time you spend on the Mastery Curve.

If you want to get good at this online business thing, you need to learn to love the plateau. If love is too strong a word, then you at least need to learn how to accept it.

You can’t brute force your way through it. Praying to God/the Universe/Tom Cruise won’t make it go away. Paying a guru to hold your hand through the process will only make your wallet lighter.

The Mastery Curve is baked into the structure of reality. No one can make the bad parts go away.

The ONLY thing that works is consistent effort, day in and day out. Putting in the reps. Dedicating yourself to your craft. The time’s going to go by no matter what. The earth will keep on going around the sun over and over again, just like it always has. The seasons will change and the years will pass. The only thing you get to decide is whether you keep leveling up to new plateaus or quit.

It’s up to you.