The 50th Law - 50 Cent [75]
This new pattern of thinking and learning is not progress. It creates a phenomenon that we shall call the “short-circuit.” To reach the end of anything, to master a process, requires time, focus, and energy. When people are so distracted, their minds constantly moving from one thing to another, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain concentration on one thing for a few hours, let alone for months and years. Under this influence, the mind will tend to short-circuit; it will not be able to go all the way to the end of a task. It will want to move on to something else that seems more enticing. It becomes hard to make things well when the focus is broken—which is why we find a gradual increase in products that are shoddy, made with less and less attention to detail.
Understand: the real secret, the real formula for power in this world, lies in accepting the ugly reality that learning requires a process, and this in turn demands patience and the ability to endure drudge work. It is not sexy or seductive at first glance, but this truth is based on something real and substantial—an age-old wisdom that will never be overturned. The key is the level of your desire. If you are really after power and mastery, then you will absorb this idea deeply and engrave it in your mind: there are no shortcuts. You will distrust anything that is fast and easy. You will be able to endure the initial months of dull, repetitive labor, because you have an overall goal. This will prevent you from short-circuiting, knowing many things but mastering none of them. In the end, what you really will be doing is mastering yourself—your impatience, your fear of boredom and empty time, your need for constant fun and amusement.
The following are five principal strategies for developing the proper relationship to process.
PROGRESS THROUGH TRIAL AND ERROR
Based on his street fighting as a teenager, Jack Johnson had the feeling that he could some day become a great boxer. But he was black and poor, too poor to afford a trainer. And so in 1896, at the age of eighteen, he began a rather remarkable process. He looked for any conceivable fight he could have in the ring, with any kind of opponent. In the beginning he suffered some terrible beatings from boxers who used him as sparring material. But since this was his only form of education, he quickly learned to become as evasive as possible, to prolong the fights so he could learn.
At the time, fights could go a full twenty rounds, and Johnson’s goal was always to drag them out to the maximum. In that time he would carefully study his opponents. He observed how some types would move in familiar patterns and how others would telegraph their punches. He could categorize them by the look in their eye and their body language. He learned to provoke some into a rage so he could study their reactions; others he lulled to sleep with a calm style, to see the effects of this as well.
Johnson’s method was quite painful—it meant fifteen to twenty bouts a year. He suffered innumerable hard blows. Even though he could knock out most of his opponents, he preferred to be evasive and learn on the job. This meant hearing endless taunts from the mostly white audiences that he was a coward. Slowly, however, it began to pay off. He faced such a variety of foes that he became adept at recognizing their particular style the instant the fight began. He could sense their weaknesses and when exactly he should move in for the kill. He accustomed himself—mentally and physically—to the pace of a long, grueling bout. He gained an intuitive feel for the space of the boxing ring itself, and how to maneuver and exhaust his opponents over the course of twenty rounds. Many of them later confessed that he seemed to have the ability to read their minds; he was always a step ahead. Following this path, within a few short years Johnson transformed himself into the heavyweight champion of the