"To love the plateau is to love the eternal now, to enjoy the inevitable spurts of progress and the fruits of accomplishment, then serenely to accept the new plateau that waits just beyond them. To love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life."
From the book "Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment" by George Leonard, author and Aikido instructor
I'm starting a new life. As I mentioned earlier, July tends to be the month in which I make major life-changing decisions. 12 years ago in July I immigrated from Iran to Canada. Five years ago in July I visited United States for the first time when I went to Manhattan, New York on the Independence Day. Two years ago I moved from Toronto, Canada to Seattle, Washington to work at Microsoft. Last year I was on a plane to Europe in July, to backpack 22 countries in 80 days. This year, it's July again.
So I decided to seek the waves of the sea of change. I packed my life, rented a one way U-Haul truck from Seattle to California, said goodbye to Microsoft, found a job in the San Francisco Bay area and got an admission offer to Carnegie Mellon University in Silicon Valley. The campus is located in NASA Research Park. If I was looking for an exciting change, I couldn't be more excited right now.
I'm writing this as of two weeks after the move. I drove the entire way within 24 hours. Everything I have is in storage and I'm hopping between hotels while working during the day and spending quality time with my girlfriend Abby in the evenings. The lifestyle reminds me of Europe: Not having a permanent place, but knowing that I'm treasuring life's passing moments more than I ever had during the routine periods. This is what George Leonard describes as "the inevitable spurts of progress and the fruits of accomplishment" and I'm sure to expect and accept that the next plateau beyond now offers less excitement and more hard work.
That brings me to the reason I'm writing today. The book "Mastery" by George Leonard, although written in a very simple literature form void of any fancy language -- kind of like my blog -- has changed my life. Since I read it 4 years ago, upon graduation and while hunting for my first career gig, it has transformed my way of thinking about life. It has made me realize truly what it means to pursue challenges instead of goals and rewards. It has inspired me to think of boredom, what he calls the plateau, as a time for pushing oneself and learning, so that the next "spurt of progress" is larger and more significant. Ambitious individuals sometimes wait around, like Neo in The Matrix, to suddenly be discovered and be told what their life mission is. I have learned that the knowledge is out there, but you are your only mentor and self-discipline is your only weapon. When the sea is calm, you should be preparing to master the next storm.
One of the key factors in my quest for sustained personal growth is keeping track of the best books recommended to me, using a spreadsheet. Doing so assures me that one day I will gain, in a short and contextually relevant period of time, what the author and thousands of readers have come to discover and treasure by consensus. Recommendations and reviews, such as those found on Amazon, are the best ways to find these books. I have found a better source though: University faculty recommendations, as well as high reviews and peer recommendations.
I'm going to read the following books sometime this year while working and going to graduate school. See if you are also interested:
- First things first (Stephen R. Covey)
How to look at and organize your time totally differently.
Carnegie Mellon University recommendation - Leadership and self-deception: getting out of the box (Arbinger Institute)
A novel-style life-changing book on how we view others, from inside our self-deceiving box, and how that impacts our ability to lead them
Carnegie Mellon University recommendation - Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organizations (Clay Shirkey)
According to the Publisher Weekly, the author contextualizes the digital networking age with philosophical, sociological, economical and statistical theories, and points to its major successes and failures. According to Ray Ozzie (Microsoft Chief Software Architect), the author's pattern-matching skills are second-to-none.
Carnegie Mellon University recommendation - The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
A banned Soviet-era book about protesting for freedom in the face of interrogation, fear, and terror. I'm interested in this book now, because the current affairs of my homeland, Iran, is a repetition of this history.
Recommended a few years ago by my friend, Natasha - One hundred years of solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
A brilliant Latin American literature of love and loss that presents some contemporary history of that part of the world in the form of a mysterious fantasy. I enjoy history, both in real and fantasy form. I've also always held recommendations from this friend highly. Those are my motivations for wanting to read this book.
Recommended a few years ago by my friend, Zavosh
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