The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy and Human Nature

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We are taught that we should obey our teachers, our bosses, our leaders, imaginary entities that are worshiped around the world. Redefine pleasure: The pursuit of pleasure is distracting. If you consider the work you do boring. If you constantly dream about finishing your job so you can do something more entertaining. Then you’re not doing the right job. Real pleasures should come from overcoming challenges and refining your skills. The Daily Laws is divided into 12 parts – each representing a month from our calendar. Each month focuses on a specific task you need to master so you can get closer to living a fulfilling life. A worthy life. The goal is to get to the Inside. This means going through the arduous, boring, slow process of learning the basics. This process isn’t necessarily fun. It’s often disorienting and aggravating – but, little by little, the piano stops being a jumble of keys. You start to think in chords. You stop thinking about where your fingers should go. You’ve entered into the instrument, playing instinctually, understanding it not from the outside in but from the inside out. That’s what it means to get Inside.

The story of Robert Greene’s life task is the perfect example. As a child, Greene knew what he wanted to be. He loved words. He wanted to be a writer – maybe a novelist. Then came high school, college, graduation. He had to find a job, make a living. He still loved words – loved reading, loved writing. But being a novelist wasn’t going to pay the bills. He became a journalist. It’s time for a subject change. The last three months were about the path to Mastery. The next five – so, through August – are about the game of power that’s always being played, both in the workplace and out, and how to navigate that game. So let’s get started. There is something strangely calming about reading this book. You realize that achieving mastery is going to take a lot of time. But instead of feeling depressed because you need to wait an abnormally long amount of time to obtain the skills needed to call yourself an expert. You feel fine. You understand that achieving greatness – sort to say – takes time. Besides, you get that it’s not about the outcome. But about enjoying the process. Notable Quotes:of February (Choose Time): Remove something from you life today that is wasting your precious time unnecessarily. Einstein worked on becoming good at his job so he could spend extra time on his theory of relativity. Mastery, chapter II.

The first part of the journey is about Mastery. And the first step on that journey is identifying your Life Task. We won’t get to Mastery in this month. Mastery is the theme of month number three. And that’s about as good a description of Mastery as you’re going to get. Whatever you’re undertaking, be it a sport or a writing project or learning the piano, you have to get to the Inside. of February (Two Kinds of Failure): Act on one of your ideas right now. Do so with boldness. One way to fail is to never try out your ideas. This kind of failure is terrible for you. The other kind is when you try an idea out but it doesn’t work. This kind of failure helps you grow and will eventually lead to success. What idea do you fear trying out? Mastery, chapter III. The first branch – the month of January – will help you figure out your life’s tasks. This is the most important decision in your life because it will give you direction. Allow you to arrange all other areas in your life in a way that best suits your mission. Think for yourself: All of our ideas and all of our beliefs are transferred in our brains from other people. We believe in the god we believe because, at some point in the past, our caregivers explained the concept of Christianity (or other, depending on your views). And while there is nothing inherently bad about holding some of the beliefs we currently hold, it’s a good idea to be a bit rebellious. To create your own views of the world based on how you, yourself, imagine things. Get rid of some old views and create your own. Here’s what Robert Greene suggests, “Commandment: You need to think for yourself and not be tied to what other people have told you is reality.”April. The Perfect Courtier: Playing the Game of Power: In life, we are playing a civilized war. We are trying to please our current “master” while retaining a positive relationship with the rest of the “servants”. We don’t want to appear too ambitious because if others notice, they’ll try to bring us down.