THE REAL WORK: Adam Gopnik on the Mystery of Mastery

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Education, Science

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A few years ago, Adam Gopnik, a longtime writer for The New Yorker and three-time winner of the National Magazine Award, started thinking about all the things he wasn't good at. He couldn't dance the foxtrot or bake a brioche. Well into his 50s, he still had no idea how to drive a car. To make matters worse, when he looked around, he saw people who could do these things — often with great skill. How, he wondered, did they do it? How do any of us get good at the things we're good at? And how do some of us become next-level masters? To answer those questions, Adam set out to master the skills he lacked, and he has written up the results in a profound little book, "The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery."

Transcript

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0:00.0	At Atlassian, we believe impossible things are only impossible alone.
0:04.4	Just ask the 75% of Fortune 500 companies that use Atlassian products like Jira, Confluence,
0:10.0	and Trello to tackle their biggest challenges.
0:12.3	Atlassian, for projects impossible alone.
0:15.1	LinkedIn presents
0:21.4	I'm Rufus Griscom and this is the next big idea.
0:25.8	Today, legendary New Yorker writer Adam Kaapnek on the Mystery of Mastery.
0:41.5	We live in a world that prizes achievement.
0:55.8	It starts when we're young.
0:58.2	Go to school, ace the test, make the grade, get into another school,
1:03.6	and it continues pretty much unabated as we march through life, get the best job,
1:08.7	climb to the top of the ladder, marry the perfect person, have great kids,
1:13.4	send them to the right school, and watch as the cycle of achievement starts all over again.
1:19.4	The problem with living this way is self-evident.
1:22.8	It's rote, soulless, formulaic.
1:26.6	But what is the alternative?
1:29.1	In his new book The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery,
1:33.1	longtime New Yorker writer Adam Kaapnek,
1:35.3	since the alternative is to a shoe achievement in favor of accomplishment.
1:40.4	What's the difference?
1:42.0	Well, if achievement is about passing through checkpoints in a never-ending rat race,
1:46.4	then accomplishment, as Adam defines it, is, quote,
	...

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