Paolo, could you explain what you mean when you say people have lost the art of mastery?

The process of mastery is something I believe people have largely lost touch with. Mastery isn’t about quick wins, shortcuts, or flashy achievements. It’s about dedication, depth, and a commitment to understanding every facet of a skill, craft, or discipline. But in today’s world, we’ve become obsessed with speed, instant results, and surface-level knowledge. We want to hack, optimize, and achieve things faster and faster, but that approach skips the most crucial part: the journey itself.

Mastery requires time, patience, and often solitude. It’s not glamorous, and it doesn’t come with immediate rewards. It’s about diving deep, practicing deliberately, and sometimes hitting walls—again and again. This process teaches resilience, perseverance, and humility. When people embrace mastery, they learn to find joy in the small improvements, in refining details, and in developing a true, nuanced understanding of their craft. Mastery isn’t about perfection; it’s about relentless progress.

But today, many people expect quick success. They think mastery means being able to Google answers or copy someone else’s formula. They chase certifications, credentials, and superficial skills that look impressive on paper but don’t hold up in real-world situations. They’re skimming the surface instead of immersing themselves in the full, often challenging process of learning and growth.

This loss of the process of mastery also leads to shallow confidence. When you skip the journey, you miss the depth, the insight, and the grounded confidence that only come from truly knowing your craft inside and out. People are more interested in “looking like an expert” than actually becoming one. And that creates a hollow kind of expertise—one that falls apart when real challenges come along.

Mastery requires falling in love with the process, not just the end result. It’s the willingness to put in years of learning, often without any external validation, simply because you’re passionate about what you’re doing. It’s the deep satisfaction that comes from knowing you’ve built something that can’t be easily replicated because you’ve committed to it on a level most people won’t.

So, when I say people have lost the process of mastery, I mean they’ve lost the understanding that true skill, true insight, and true success come from depth, not speed. Mastery is about engaging deeply with something, embracing the struggle, and understanding that the journey itself is the reward. And in a world that prizes shortcuts, mastery stands as a reminder that some things can only be achieved through time, patience, and unwavering commitment.