This article is an early look at our upcoming special issue on Mastery. Check back in on January 28 to catch the full issue.
After years of studies and six months in New York, I was convinced I’d mastered English. I was cracking jokes with American friends, binge-watching shows without subtitles, and even thinking in English half the time.
Then I moved to London for my first job at Google, and suddenly, I felt like I’d never truly master the language. Colleagues used phrases I’d never heard. Cultural references flew over my head. I found myself nodding along in meetings, pretending to understand jokes that left me completely lost. It felt terrible.
I was encountering the growing pains inherent to mastery, but everything I’d been told about getting good at something had set me up to misinterpret this growth as failure.
Our cultural narrative about mastery is not just incomplete. It’s actively misleading, and we’ve mythologized mastery in ways that make people quit right when they might be breaking into new territories.
The five lies we tell ourselves about mastery
The problem starts with how we think about mastery itself. We carry a set of deeply ingrained assumptions about how it works — assumptions that feel obvious and true, but that are actually counterproductive. Here are the most damaging ones:
- Misconception #1: Mastery is a destination. We imagine crossing a finish line where we’ll finally “arrive” as experts. Watch any master craftsperson, though, and you’ll see someone still questioning their approach, still discovering new techniques, still experimenting and pushing into uncharted territory.
- Misconception #2: Improvement is linear. We expect steady, measurable progress: practice more, get better, repeat. Reality looks more like a stock chart: long plateaus punctuated by sudden jumps, with occasional dips when you’re integrating something new.
- Misconception #3: Mastery requires extreme intensity. Research shows that sustainable, consistent practice beats sporadic bursts of intensity. Someone who practices 30 minutes daily for a year will typically outpace someone who practices 3 hours once a week.
- Misconception #4: Technique is everything. We obsess over the mechanics: the “right” way to hold the instrument, the perfect form, the exact method. But while technique matters enormously, so do mindset, feedback loops, rest, and environmental support.
- Misconception #5: Mastery feels easy once achieved. This is perhaps the most dangerous myth of all. Even masters experience frustration and have to revisit fundamentals, but they’ve learned to find satisfaction in the process itself, not just the outcomes.
So, if all our assumptions about mastery are wrong, what actually works? The answer lies in how our brains learn and adapt.
Achieving mastery through experimentation
Our brains adapt most rapidly when faced with novel challenges, not repetitive drilling. Perhaps most importantly, studies on what researchers call “desirable difficulty” show that struggle isn’t a sign that you’re failing. It’s a sign that your brain is forming new neural pathways.
That’s why experts don’t just repeat what they know — they constantly experiment at the edge of their abilities. Instead of grinding through repetition, they treat every practice session like a mini-laboratory.
Here’s what that looks like:
- Run tiny experiments. Let go of the idea of mastery as a destination. Instead, experiment with different approaches. A programmer might experiment for a few days with coding without looking at Stack Overflow or ChatGPT. A musician might practice scales for 10 minutes before touching any songs for two weeks. These tiny experiments let you test the boundaries of your knowledge while embracing the in-betweens.
- Design feedback loops. Create systems that help you notice what’s working. You might track which new words you actually use in conversation, photograph your work at different stages to see patterns in your process, or ask for specific feedback after each one-on-one meeting with your manager. Good feedback loops help you recognize subtle opportunities for improvement that are easy to miss day-to-day.
- Approach challenges with curiosity. Masters treat obstacles as puzzles to solve. When you hit something difficult, get curious. What, specifically, is hard about this? Is there a different angle to try? What would happen if you broke the problem into smaller pieces?
Real mastery isn’t about arriving somewhere. It’s about becoming the kind of person who can navigate anywhere, developing such comfort with experimentation that you can adapt, grow, and find new edges no matter what domain you’re exploring.
This article The 5 myths that make us quit before we get good is featured on Big Think.
