Mastery is a book that talks about this concept of mentor-apprentice I strongly recommend this book for your case.

I strongly suspect they are referring to Mastery by Robert Greene

There’s a good book called Mastery (Robert Greene) on this topic

Mastery by George Leonard - learning that goal of doing something was not to reach a goal, was the most profound lesson I learned towards enjoying what I do everyday by the way of enjoying the process.

Read Mastery by Robert Greene, great resource that talks about this topic widely.

Check out anything by Zig Ziglar -> Napoleon Hill -> Andrew Carnegie and Tony Robbins.

People miss that sales is not just technique or what you say but state of mind, belief and confidence.

Stay away from sales only focus books.

If you really want to learn something check "Mastery" by Robert Greene.

Mastery by George Leonard, right? I've read it before and still have a copy that I will reread.

If you haven’t already, try reading Mastery by George Leonard. Some of his examples / narrative choices are dated but if you can look past that it’s got great insights. It’s a piece of the puzzle but can provide some orientation.

Read up on Mastery by George Leonard. You seem to be describing a "hacker". I highly doubt that you truly master skills so quickly. Mastery should not be taken lightly. The actual process of mastery is consuming and immensely rewarding.

Today, it's not enough to be good at something. You need to be the best at what you do.

In this article, Ephraim writes on why you should aim for MASTERY, the one thing that really sets you apart.

Lessons shared in this article were inspired by the book Mastery written by Robert Greene.

jonathan Livinsgton Seagull and Illusions Both by Richard Bach were very influential in my late twenties.
In mY thirties I was glad I found Mastery by George Leonard. All three of them less than 100 pages to close to 100 pages.

Mastery by Robert Greene is one I mentioned in another post. I don't want to say its life changing but its extremely good and it's the closest thing I've found to a self help book that isn't full of fluff. Edit "Who owns the future" by Jarron Lanier was good too.

The Art of Learning is one of the best books I read this year. If you liked that, you'd also probably enjoy The Inner Game of Tennis and Mastery by Robert Greene.

My criterion is 'influential on me', they may not necessarily be the greatest works of literature.

Mastery - Robert Greene

The Talent Code - Daniel Coyle

Peak - Anders Ericsson

The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy - William B. Irvine

The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning - Peter C. Brown

Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art - Stephen Nachmanovitch

Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari

Thanks. I looked up Mastery learning and will delve deeper into it. Here is the link if anyone else is interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning

The 9 books mentioned in the video are as follows:

1. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

2. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

3. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

4. The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

5. The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

6. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

7. Mastery by George Leonard

8. Mindfulness for Beginners by Jon Kabat-Zinn

9. The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday

Couple of top selling books on Facebook , one one Snapchat ( look up on amazon ) , Mastery by Robert Greene and How I Built This podcast by Guy Raz. Enough material to know how to build ten unicorns.

I recommend a book by George Leonard called "Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment". It talks about this topic... very fascinating and useful read (also quite short)

http://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Keys-Success-Long-Term-Fulfill...

IMO, its best to be a Generalizing Specialist (T-shaped individual[0]). How to become that is another matter altogether.

I would also suggest reading Mastery by Robert Greene. Though the book is unnecessarily long, the points he raises are pretty good. Reading the anecdotes is also quite interesting.

0 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/andyboynton/2011/10/18/are-you-...

>Psychology
>Persuasion

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a must read. Also, Robert Greene books, such as the 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, etc. are really good as well, but the 48 Laws of Power gave me a weird feeling. You should also read Edward Bernays, as he's one of the fathers of modern marketing/media. (Disclaimer: I'm not a psychologist).

>Mathematics

I like to go through text books, but my absolute favorite book that I've read is The Motion Paradox by Joseph Mazur(brother of the great Barry Mazur) - it's what really sparked my interest in mathematics. There's also Fermat's Enigma(reads like a novel, really nice). I also have another book called Problem Solving Through Recreational Mathematics, published by dover thrift editions. It's a fun book, with a bunch of puzzles based on various subjects. Also A History of Mathematics is a nice read too, mostly for reference, but you could probably make reading a chapter a day a thing.

"Mastery" by Robert Greene
"Emotional Equations" by Chip Conley
"The startup owner manual" by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf
"Steve Jobs"

10,000 hours is taken from the book Outliers, but it's not even true mastery. It's said to be the level where Bill Gates entered Harvard. 10,000 hours is more journeyman level than mastery.

The book Mastery goes into much more detail, where it repeats that 10,000 hours is necessary, but there are other components to mastery. Among them is mentorship and creating some form of masterwork.

The pro athletes have gone far past the 10,000 hours mark, but chances are they also had mentors and they've also taken some risks and invented their own styles. Keep practicing.

Mastery by Robert Greene, just looked at that link and I'm putting that on my reading list!

Thanks Andrey

The book "Mastery" by George Leonard is a distilled version of "The Inner Game of Tennis." Highly recommended, and it can be had for a few bucks shipped on Amazon.

(Desktop/tablet only).

I used to be terrible at remembering what I read, and I read a lot.

Then one day I heard about The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read as popularised by the authors Ryan Holiday (The Obstacle is the Way) and Robert Greene (Mastery, The 48 Laws of Power). It requires you to copy out - in your own words, and by hand - the key anecdotes, phrases, and quotes from books. It requires a bit of work to do, but boy, was it a game-changer. The act of writing key parts out again in my own words helps me remember waaaaay more than simply reading it.

The problem with that system, however, is that you have to write everything out by hand, which means that your notes aren't exactly accessible, you can lose/damage them, and finding shelf space for all the boxes actually starts to become a problem. So I built this web app which is based on the system, but obviously with all the improvements one can implement with a digital version. I can cross-reference my notes, tag them, search and generate a citation at the click of a button etc

I built this for myself, but some friends and family asked to use it, so I added user accounts, a landing page, and put it on a domain I’ve had for years.

Ignore the fact that there’s a pricing page - it’s completely free to use. I built and designed the entirety of the app in my spare time (I’m a car mechanic by day). It’s nothing more than a standard Rails app.

Would love to get your feedback!

I just finished "Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment" by George Leonard.

It approaches the topic of attaining mastery from the angle of Aikido, but I found it strongly resembling my feelings in the programming domain. I'm still pondering it, and will likely re-read it soon (it's a very short book).

I'm a big fan of both Robert Greene's Mastery and Leonardo da Vinci, but I think using da Vinci as an example of patience is fairly misleading. After having read numerous biographies on the man, my conclusion is that it's remarkable that he managed to get as much done as he did. He was the ultimate dabbler, interested in and curious about virtually everything. His works took a long time to complete because he generally was distracted by some minor detail for years on end. If the ideal is productivity, then surely Michelangelo is a far better role model.

Of course, the real question here is whether productivity is what one should be ultimately aiming at. Doing very few things very well (alternatively, creating a small number of high-quality things) is a better ideal, to my mind.

'It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.' - Friedrich Nietzsche

1. Born a Crime (audiobook) by Trevor Noah is an entertaining yet thought-provoking listen

2. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (just gives a different perception to success all together, at least did for me)

3. Mastery (Robert Greene) - can be dismissed as Anecdotes but really powerful ones

4. Deep Work (Cal Newport) - a guy who doesn't like to be on social media and I found reading about him and stumbled upon this and it's absolutely an insightful read

5. The subtle art of not giving a fk - This is a short, beautiful and an amazing read even if you aren't looking for self improvement

I found this approach was leading to depression. My attempt to have "extremely productive hobbies" just made me feel bad about them when they were neglected. It also led me to taking on too many things that interested me (garden, car, reading, tech, and so on). I found that when I quit prioritizing and just did stuff I enjoyed doing without worrying what the long term outcome would be, I was happier. If you've ever read Shop Class as Soulcraft [1] or Mastery (by George Leonard, not the Robert Greene book) [2] you will have some idea of what I mean. I began to pursue things for the sake of pursuing them, not because there was an end goal in site.

I realize that this is a purely personal anecdote and I realize this is not how people get rich, run a triathlon or change the world, but maybe I just can't do those things.

[1]: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-so...
[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Keys-Success-Long-Term-Fulfil...

Be aware that the word "loser" is loaded in modern culture, in a rather illegitimate way. I wish this were available in text format, but listen to this four minute essay and I feel sure you will have a different perspective on your situation:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3200029

As for making progress on some goals, I'd check out the literature on deliberate practice, and the strategies on the Less Wrong and Overcoming Bias blogs. (Your note is displaying a range of cognitive biases.)

The recent book on Mastery by Robert Greene lays out a lot of tactics. The good and bad news for you is that almost all approaches to mastery require becoming more involved with other people. The Mixergy interview with Robert Greene is excellent. I don't remember ever hearing Andrew Warner as excited about a book. This interview is not behind the paywall yet, so enjoy it while you can:

http://mixergy.com/robert-greene-mastery-interview/

> it's not incumbent on the student or athlete to develop it, it is the sign of a good teacher

Its more a sign of both - the student's willingness to adjust and the teacher's willingness to refine. The reason I say both is that you run into students that have a better chance of picking something up right away (prior experience) and others that do not. The student that does not have that prior experience still needs it in order to be successful. A good instructor knows not to only focus on the people with prior experience and help boost the latter as well.

For example, in martial arts (as I noted elsewhere), you have someone who has prior experience in body coordination, which makes it easier for them to pick up an art (or dance or a sport). A student whose never stepped on to a mat in their life still needs body coordination. While a good instructor should see that and help build that coordination, the student needs to develop motivation and discipline to do these things without the need of someone else. An out of shape student should needs to recognize they need to put in extra work to move up a level - that is something the instructor can only point out.

A great book I use as a backing to my teaching philosophy is Mastery by George Leonard[1]. It categories the different personalities of the student into Dabbler, Obsessive, and Hacker (not in a good way). Dabblers try but quit when things get hard; Obsessives consume everything possible until they start seeing diminished returns; and Hackers just kind of "show up" and steadily maintain/improve. People can be all three for different things but its handling the particular category appropriately that pushes people toward mastery.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Keys-Success-Long-Term-Fulfil...

1. A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine

-my first introduction to stoicism.

2. Mastery by Robert Greene

-stories about the lives of luminaries such as Henry Ford, Michael Faraday, and Da Vinci on what it takes to be successful.

3. Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger

-for providing me a new mental framework on building discipline and confidence.

4. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

-for giving me a paradigm shift on how to think about myself and others.

5. Seeking Wisdom From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin

-a compendium of cognitive biases and mental models.

Some books that helped me:

- The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

- Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins

- Indistractable by Nir Eyal

- Mastery by Robert Greene

I very much wish I would have read the below books in (or pre) high school. I'm not sure if they have the same effect on everyone, but for me they were huge in redefining elements of my life that needed to be fixed/unlearned/enhanced.

All related to having a passion for learning and life in general:

"Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin

"Mastery" by George Leonard

"A Mathematician's Lament" by Paul Lockhart

"Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" by Richard Feynman

(1) As long as your goal is to aggressively learn and grow and understand, then your dignity is certifiable. (I'll even print you out a certificate if you ask!) So act as one aggressively interested in learning. If these guys are really that good/worth their salt, they will appreciate your eagerness to learn from them.

(2) This isn't uncommon. Our industry needs to have better professional training for juniors IMHO.

(3) No. I've found that the better someone is the more interested they are in teaching and bringing others up to the task. The guys with rotten attitudes tend to plateau and remain B+ players at best.

A couple words of advice:

* While you should always seek good mentors, it's imperative that you take your growth into your own hands. Read and practice as much as you can on your own. Read the book "Mastery" by George Leonard.

* Read the book Mindset. In the parlance of that book, rotten attitudes generally equate with the "fixed mindset" and those guys will plateau.

* Focus on your self. It may be the right decision to run away from these bitter jerks. But you may find that by focusing on your growth some of them may loosen up and help you grow. You can still learn from jerks, and as long as you stay growth mindset, you will surpass them over time. Patient focus and study! (If the environment however is truly toxic for you, then, yes, flee. If you flee, however, flee to an environment that is still challenging and has expertise that you can aggressively learn from.)

* Focus on your (future) self. Don't think "I'm an idiot now" (even us experts are missing a huge mountain of knowledge and understanding and are idiots ourselves). It's a gift to "see" what you don't know. Because now you can go work toward filling that gap.

Hope this helps!

[edited. fixed typos and clarified advice]

Read Mastery by Robert Greene. For a shorter version, watch the video on it by Talks at Google

Not a book, but if you're looking to learn modern SQL in a hands-on way, I created Mastery with SQL (masterywithsql.com) specifically because I was frustrated with traditional SQL (and PostgreSQL) content that's lacking in high quality and challenging exercises.

Mastery with SQL has over 150 exercises, ranging from easy to very difficult, where you're primarily working with a single database and trying to answer interesting questions about a business (which months saw the highest revenue, best sales employee, most watched movie, find missing records, etc.).

I spent an enormous amount of time working on the exercises for this course (more than the actual content itself) and people who take the course consistently tell me working through the problems helped them learn SQL more deeply than they've learned anywhere else.

I am using OKRs with a small team, and the results are being very good. Basically it´s a very clear communication tool. When used correctly, the team simply knows the measurable things company expect of them.

OKR´s helps on "Mastery", one of the three pillars of the book "Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us".

This book, "Measure What Matters", is my next reading. Thank you HN.

> 33 Strategies of War
> 48 Laws of Power

I keep going back to it because it applies in almost every conflict in life, from competitors to personal relationships to office politics. It's also very entertainingly written.

> The Checklist Manifesto

I know it cover to cover but someone impressive always keeps recommending it and I go back for a reread. Alas, it isn't very practical for a software engineer, where you face different situations daily. I really wish it was because I want it to work.

> Never Split the Difference

Negotiation is a very emotional thing. Most of the time it's simply negotiating with kids or the spouse. This book is completely amazing for it, but a lot of techniques feel unnatural. I brush up to find techniques I was using wrong or simply to remind myself to focus on empathy.

> Deep Work
> Mastery
> Peak Performance
> The Art of Learning
> The Power of Habit

My go to motivational books.

I think it's telling that those in tech, including billionaire execs like Jobs, were/are very sensitive to the usage of tech devices by their kids. Addiction to games, news, apps, entertainment is real, but that's only half the issue. It fosters this itch where we can't linger on uncomfortable thoughts without instinctively grabbing our phone to be distracted. This include when we're trying to really go deep on a subject matter that could take a long time to grok.

I credit a lot of changes I made over the last few years to courses like Learning How to Learn (Oakley, Sejnowski) and books like Deep Work (Newport) and Mastery (Greene) in helping to bring me back to realize the importance of uninterrupted blocks of hard, focused work. That coupled with moments of quiet time away from devices so that I can let my mind kind of just wander and process life has made life actually more fulfilling.

I quit Facebook, Twitter, and only check Instagram once every few days. I'm not totally 'clean' since I'll still spend time on YouTube and Reddit during moments of frustration, but I think it's important not to beat oneself up when one 'cheats.' After all, it's not completely a new phenomenon. There's always been things like books, newspapers, TV, radio to distract our attention.

But maybe it just feels a bit different since some of the smartest people in the world are working everyday to make sure we're looking at the thing they're working on in a very calculated fashion. That plus the fact that sometimes it feels like you're supposed to know so much of what's going on in the world and environment around you. But really, so many topics are so much more complicated than a simple cursory look that it feels kind of fruitless to jump into it when it realistically takes hundreds of hours to truly understand it.

Great quote from George Leonard's Mastery:

"In his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Zen master Shunryu Suzuki approaches the question of fast and slow learners in terms of horses. “In our scriptures, it is said that there are four kinds of horses: excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver’s will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second will run as well as the first one, just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. You can imagine how difficult it is for the fourth one to learn to run.

When we hear this story, almost all of us want to be the best horse. If it is impossible to be the best one, we want to be the second best.” But this is a mistake, Master Suzuki says. When you learn too easily, you’re tempted not to work hard, not to penetrate to the marrow of a practice.

“If you study calligraphy, you will find that those who are not so clever usually become the best calligraphers. Those who are very clever with their hands often encounter great difficulty after they have reached a certain stage. This is also true in art, and in life.” The best horse, according to Suzuki, may be the worst horse. And the worst horse can be the best, for if it perseveres, it will have learned whatever it is practicing all the way to the marrow of its bones."

(Shameless self-plug - I wrote a blog post about this a while ago: http://i.saac.me/post/lurning-cearves/)

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SHOW

[00:01:21] Guest introduction

[00:02:31] We learn about where Robert is from

[00:04:07] What kind of kid were you in high school?

[00:05:12] Robert talks to us about some interesting experiences he had while traveling across the country at age 17

[00:07:45] What Robert thought his future would look like

[00:10:20] Do you ever get jealous or feel envious of people who don't have ambition?

[00:14:39] How do you see history repeating itself in 2021 and beyond?

[00:19:00] Which aspect of human nature is going to kind has been sending us off in this direction of irrationality and into this revolutionary type of age?

[00:23:27] What would be the keys of power or the keys to power in this situation?

[00:32:38] Robert suffered a stroke in 2018, he shares his progress on the road to recovery

[00:34:12] How 50 Cent help inspire Robert to write Mastery – and he share stories about 50 Cent’s work ethic

[00:37:26] Robert talks about the six stages of mastery

[00:42:36] Robert shares some tips on how to go about finding a mentor

[00:46:46] What would you say is the difference between art and science?

[00:50:57] It’s 100 years in the future, what do you want to be remembered for?

[00:52:56] The Random Round

Might not be exactly what you're looking for but I recommend two books: "Peak" by Eric Anderson and "Mastery" by Robert Greene. Both of these books are really about getting to the top of your field but are both directly centered around how we learn. Mastery takes more of a macro approach to becoming the best by providing lots of real world anecdotal stories (like that of Leonardo Divinci, and Paul Graham) Peak goes a little bit deeper on the science of how we learn if I remember correctly, but both are definitely worth a read.

"Robert Greene is the author of the international bestsellers The 48 Laws of Power, ...[list of books]. His highly anticipated fifth book, Mastery, examines the lives of great historical figures such as Charles Darwin, Mozart, Paul Graham, and Henry Ford and distills the traits and universal ingredients that made them masters. ...more filler..."

Wow, Darwin, Mozart, Graham and Ford. PG's head must be spinning. ;-)

Mastery - Robert Greene

Gives you a guide on how to attain a level of mastery in a domain of knowledge.

See Mastery by George Leonard

which is a great book and highly recommended

even if you are not into karate or martial arts.

You have echoed his sketch of punctuated plateaus (p14):

The Mastery Curve

  There's really no way around it. Learning any new skill 
  involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of
  which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau
  somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it.

[pdf] http://index-of.co.uk/Social-Interactions/Mastery%20-%20The%...

"Mastery" by Robert Greene. "The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin. "The Icarus Deception" by Seth Godin.

Mastery by Robert Greene

The post schows a good example of someone who achieved mastery in his field of interest and solved a really hard problem. The traits/habits he describes remember me of the lessons I learned from the book Mastery by Robert Green. Just one line from a short summary [1]:

>> Desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers.

[1] https://sivers.org/book/Mastery2

- The first one, even with all its well-known shortcomings, was "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kyosaki. It opened my eyes to "there's another option out there".

- Benjamin Franklin's autobiography (translated into modern English).

- PG's "Hackers and Painters" (why I joined this forum).

- Tim Ferris's "Four Hour Work Week" (has to be taken with a gigantic grain of salt, but has many very helpful and practical tips and ideas.)

- "Mastery" by George Leonard

- "Good to Great" by Jim Collins

And finally (and I don't want to turn this into a political flamewar, "grain of salt" applies here as well, etc, etc) but the book that had the most influence on me was "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Unlike all the others on the list above, it's a work of fiction, but I think it is the best at capturing and romanticizing the joy and euphoria that you feel when you build something that works.

"Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn."

- Kafka on the Shore, Murakami

Under immensely troubling times - not as bad as war or famine, but much worse than a startup or relationship failure - these books kept me going:

  - The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
  - Mastery by Robert Greene
  - Courage Under Fire by James B Stockdale
  - Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
  - Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Thanks for the recommendations, I've added these to my book list! In exchange, have you seen this [1] report about excellence in competitive swimmers? The lifetime of a swimmer is short and outcomes vary wildly, from local swim meets all the way to the Olympics. It's a great case study on the differences at each level. There should be copies on sci-hub or other online summaries.

I also liked Mastery by George Leonard [2] - it's a little booklet about mastery with the same kinds of generalisable takeaways, drawing on his experience as an Aikido practitioner.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/202063?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81940.Mastery

Read Mastery by Robert Greene.

> You will NEVER have the energy that the people whom you compare with have.

I do hope this is an extreme case of misdiagnosis: it's implying that the OP is not an achiever, and lacking ambition - just because there are a few small hurdles in the way of his getting things done!

Here's an alternative diagnosis: if you focus too much on your peers, you're poisoning your own motivation. Of course you'll spend all day on HN, if the alternative is staring at an editor with a voice in your head scolding you for not being a success. Fix that and you'll have fixed your procrastination (easier said than done, probably, but still). A reading tip: Mastery, by George Leonard.

- Mastery by Robert Greene & The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

I had to name both, because it was the combination of the two that influenced me. Essentially reading both of these moved me from the fixed mindset to the growth mindset (to borrow Carol Dweck's terms).

Mastery provides the historical examples (including incidentally, our hero, Paul Graham), and The Talent Code provides the science behind it, what deep practice does to the brain.

These books aren't the only to deal with the growth mindset (others...Carol Dweck's Mindset, Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, Anders Ericsson's Peak), but where I first encountered the idea. In changing the way I learn, and my motivation for learning, they changed my life.

I generally am not one to recommend specific books, but I read one a while back that I think would be relevant here. It's called Mastery by George Leonard. I'm very much the same way as you, characterized as being a "dabbler" in the book. I would definitely recommend giving it a read. Or two. Here's a scribd link, though its legality seems dubious: http://www.scribd.com/doc/257928/-Mastery-by-George-Leonard

I didn't see anything extraordinary in the article either. The guy focused on what he wanted to do and improved through practice.

The best book I have ever read on outlining how learning works is Mastery by George Leonard. One of his points is that many people assume we learn at a linear pace and so get frustrated when we find we are not making progress.

He says that is false. We actually learn in short bursts. There will be a period of flatness, followed by an intense period of gains where you will plateau and then fall back a little behind you're highest point but above where you were before. This will then repeat itself if you keep up. The time frame could change as well. One flat period may be days while another may be years.

This seems to be exactly the same process as the guy in the article went through.