How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?

Like many superficially accomplished people, my life strategy has been to stick with things at which I was immediately adept and abandon all others. Take philosophy. It’s not that I was great at it when I started out, or that I haven’t got better, but I showed some early promise and so I persevered. Where I did not show promise—visual art, music, any kind of sporting skill—I practiced assiduous avoidance.

I’m not proud of this proclivity, but it’s difficult to change. One of my rare attempts at aphorism: “I’ve tried to develop a growth mindset, but I think it’s something you are born with.”

In The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery, Adam Gopnik traces the adult “sense of professional competence” to a version of my strategy: you may not give up so readily, but if the learning curve is steep enough, eventually you will.

Much of what feels like mastery in adult life is actually the avoidance of a challenge. The “flow” in which, if we’re lucky, our daily work is situated, is a narrow curre…