Learning and Mastery
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“Everyone holds his future in his own hands, like a sculptor the raw material he will fashion into a figure. But it’s the same with that type of artistic activity as with all others: We are merely born with the capability to do it. The skill to mold the material into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated.”
“Thus instead of supposing that a work of art must be something that all can behold - a poem, a painting, a book, a great building - consider making of your own life a work of art. You have yourself to begin with, and a time of uncertain duration to work on it. You do not have to be what you are, and even though you may be quite content with who and what you are, it will not be hard for you to think of something much greater that you might become.”
“Test it this way: you say, “Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language.” Without using the word “energy,” tell me what you know now about the dog’s motion.” You cannot. So you learned nothing about science.”
“Nothing important comes into being overnight; even grapes or figs need time to ripen. If you say that you want a fig now, I will tell you to be patient. First, you must allow the tree to flower, then put forth fruit; then you have to wait until the fruit is ripe. So if the fruit of a fig tree is not brought to maturity instantly or in an hour, how do you expect the human mind to come to fruition, so quickly and easily?”
Excellence is its own reward
Creating one's own life requires judging self-worth by self-generated ideals; applause or disdain from others becomes insignificant because attaining excellence itself bestows pride, fulfilment and true self-esteem.
“Desultory reading is delightful, but to be beneficial, our reading must be carefully directed.”
“Directions cannot be given for achieving personal excellence, because we are all different. The gifts and potentialities of one person are not those of another. Indeed, each person is unique. His or her gifts and abilities are probably not exactly matched by anyone else on earth. And from this it follows that one person’s excellence is his or hers alone. No one can tell you how to achieve yours.”
“We deny that these differences [between expert performers and normal adults] are immutable ... Instead, we argue that the difference between expert performers and normal adults reflects a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.”
“For all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”
“Learn, both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which you really need and which you really want to know.”
Nietzsche's apprentice storyteller
Nietzsche describes the would-be short-story writer who starts as a nobody, composes anecdotes daily and becomes an ardent observer of human psychology, labouring for years before showing his work.
“If you apply yourself to study you will avoid all boredom with life, you will not long for night because you are sick of daylight, you will be neither a burden to yourself nor useless to others, you will attract many to become your friends and the finest people will flock about you.”
“To “give style” to one’s character - a great and rare art. It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye.”
“We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning. We must make them our own. We are just like a man who, needing fire, went to a neighbor’s house to fetch it, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself without remembering to carry any back home. What good does it do us to have our belly full of meat if it is not digested, if it is not transformed into us, if it does not nourish and support us?”
“That’s why the philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training. For as time passes we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite, and hold opinions the opposite of what we should.”
QuoteDeliberate effort and plateausProcrastination and delaying action2 more related links
Lenses
Modules
“Creating, actualizing one’s possibilities, always involves destructive as well as constructive aspects. It always involves destroying the status quo, destroying old patterns within oneself, progressively destroying what one has clung to from childhood on, and creating new and original forms and ways of living ...”
Rusticus: read attentively
From his teacher Quintus Junius Rusticus, Marcus learned to read attentively rather than skimming and not to be satisfied with superficial knowledge.
“But, on the whole, tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it ...”
The wind-up toy dog and mystic energy
A first-grade science book asks what makes a wind-up toy dog move and answers "energy makes it move"; a mystic formula no better than saying "movability makes it move." The real answer is that the wound-up spring tries to unwind and pushes the gears; taking the toy apart teaches science.
“Concentrating hard on something that is important is ... I can’t succeed at all without doing it. I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span.”