Mastery (63 page)

Along the way, several people contributed with their advice and ideas. First on the list would have to be 50 Cent. Our discussions back in 2007 planted the seed for this book. 50’s literary agent, Marc Gerald, played his usual midwife role in the early stages. In this vein, I would also like to thank Casper Alexander, Keith Ferrazzi, and Neil Strauss; Professor William Ripple; Francisco Gimenez; my great friends Eliot Schain, Michiel Schwarz, and Joost Elffers; and Katerina Kantola, whose memory will live on forever. I would also like to thank my sister Leslie for all of her inspiring ideas about animals and our Pleistocene ancestors.

I am, of course, eternally grateful to the contemporary Masters who agreed to be interviewed for this book. I had made it a condition that all interviews be conducted in person, with no real time limit, and that the interview subjects had to be as candid as possible about their creative process, their early struggles, and even failures along the way. All of the people I interviewed were extremely generous with their time and gracious in dealing with my often-irritating questions. They displayed the kind of open spirit that I believe plays an essential role in mastery and success in life.

In helping me to set up these interviews I must thank graduate student Elizabeth Seckel, who works with Professor V.S. Ramachandran at UCSD; Jessica Livingston, wife of Paul Graham and founding partner of Y Combinator; Andrew Franklin, my extraordinary publisher at Profile Books in the United Kingdom, who helped with the Daniel Everett interview; David Gordon, former director of the Calatrava-enhanced Milwaukee Art Museum, who helped set up the Santiago Calatrava interview; Mrs. Tina Calatrava; Cheryl Miller, executive assistant to Temple Grandin; Stephanie Smith, partner at Lehmann Maupin, who helped with the Teresita Fernández interview; and agents Nick Khan and Evan Dick at CAA, who both represent Freddie Roach.

I must also thank my mother, Laurette, for all of her patience and love, and for being my biggest fan. And, of course, I cannot fail to mention Brutus, the greatest cat who has ever lived and Master hunter.

Finally, I would like to thank all those in the past—masters, mentors, and teachers—who over the years slowly opened my eyes to so many ideas, and taught me how to think. Their presence and spirit are suffused throughout this book.

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INDEX

The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.

absolute rest, 275

Accademia del Cimento, 88, 99–100

Active-Creative Phase, 15

Adams, John, 133

adaptability, 15, 51, 133, 159–64, 234–36

adaptation strategy, 38–40

adolescence, 134–35, 172, 178

adrenaline, 288

Agassi, Andre, 111

aging, 266–67

Air Force, U.S., 77, 285

alchemy, 4, 208

creative process compared to, 242–45

of knowledge, 95–101

learning process compared to, 104–5

Alexander the Great, and Aristotle, 106

alienation, 31, 32–33, 43, 110, 111, 147–49, 151, 152, 228, 280

alphabet, phonetic, 240–41

AltaVista, 193–94

Amazon, 72–74, 161–63, 298

Ammophila wasp, 262

amputations, 211, 212–13

analogies, 187

ancestors, early human, 189, 196, 214

dominance developed by, 5–10, 14

intuition vs. instinct in, 262–63

social interactions of, 134, 138

vulnerability of, 5, 134

angels, in Leonardo’s work, 22–23, 290

animal behavior, 156–57

animals:

extinct, 52

on Galápagos, 53

Grandin’s affinity for, 43–44, 156–57, 280–84

as more than sum of parts, 257

specialists vs. opportunists in, 213–14

anomalies, 32–33, 187, 193–94, 210, 212, 214

anxiety, complexity and, 264–66

apotemnophilia, 212–13

appearance, function vs., 84–87