In the book, Be Bad First: Get Good at Things Fast to Stay Ready for the Future, Erika Andersen shares her mindset and techniques for learning new things well and quickly.

These are some of my favorite concepts and takeaways from reading the book.

Chapter 2: The Drive to Mastery: We Want to Get Good

In this chapter, Erika Andersen discusses the opportunities and barriers on the road to mastery. She offers the following observations and recommendations for us to think about:

We naturally gravitate toward mastering new skills because mastering new skills makes us feel good about ourselves.

The need to master new skills to stay alive has turned such drive into a survival instinct throughout history. Consequently, we value those things that are keys to our continued existence – no wonder mastery makes us feel good.

There is another positive element to our love of mastery. We are all capable of continuing to master new skills and knowledge throughout our lives. We can keep on learning and learning well if we choose to do so.

In addition to loving achieving mastery, we also love being competent. However, the feeling like an expert can seriously impede our ability to be open to new learning. In other words, we can be blinded by our own expertise and reject new learning opportunities.

With the world changing at an ever-faster pace, we each must be willing and able to pick up new skills as we go. We need to be comfortable enough with going back to being a novice, as often we need to achieve our goals.

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