The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery

So much of getting good at anything is just pure labor: figuring out how to try and then offering up the hours...

...Pleople always assume I'm interested in the end result-the wonderful thing they've made-when what I'm really interested in is the process. How did you get this way and why? I'm curious about the ugliness of trying, the years and years... See more

C. THI NGUYEN: So the essential insight that I got from Suits is that in so many games, the target isn’t the point. The point is this rich experience along the way. And I think a lot of the mistakes we make with games is we get into these things and we forget about these larger purposes. The fact that they can be fun. The fact that they can be beau... See more

I think a lot of people want to be but they don’t want to do . They want to have written a book, but they don’t want to write the book. They want to be fit, but they don’t want the tedium of working out. They’re ashamed of rejection and they’re ashamed of imperfection. I might want lots of people to subscribe to this Substack, but do I want to work... See more

even after all the obvious levels of skill and craft (chi) have been mastered, the Yu still depends on the discovery of new challenges (the “complicated place” or “difficulties” in the above quotation), and on the development of new skills ... In other words, the mystical heights of the Yu are not attained by some superhuman quantum jump, but simpl

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