Below is a lesson from Daily Stoic on how true mastery takes time, as well as our key learnings.

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Wisdom Takes Work

The Daily Stoic

There is a story about a samurai warrior named Banzo, who sought an education so that he could impress his father. Told by a great teacher that mastery would take ten years, he was aghast.

“I can’t wait that long. What if I work extra hard?”

“OK,” the master said. “Thirty years.”

“But I will do whatever it takes to make it go faster,” Banzo pleaded.

“In that case,” the master said, “it shall take seventy years. A student in a hurry learns the slowest.”

Valuable things rarely come quickly or easily. It takes a lot of flying time to become a certified pilot. It takes years on stage for a comedian to learn how to command an audience.

No great book is written quickly. Few fortunes are made in one swoop.

“Nothing important comes into being overnight,” Epictetus said. “Even grapes or figs need time to ripen. If you say you want a fig now, I will tell you to be patient… If the fruit of a fig tree is not brought to maturity instantly or in an hour, how do you expect the human mind to come to fruition, so quickly and easily? Don’t expect it.”

Don’t expect education, the cultivation of the human mind, to come fast or easy. It takes time. It takes discipline. It takes struggle. Most of all, it takes work.

“The greatest educational fallacy,” Stockdale would say, “is that you can get it without stress.” The road to wisdom, to living the philosophical life is a long path of stress and toil and struggle.

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Key Learnings:

• Mastery cannot be rushed — The story of Banzo shows that impatience actually slows progress. The more you try to shortcut the process, the longer it may ultimately take.

• Time and persistence are essential — Like flying hours for a pilot, stage experience for a comedian, or ripening fruit, meaningful achievements require consistent effort over years.

• Education is a slow cultivation — Growth of the mind is like nature’s processes; it cannot be forced or accelerated unnaturally.

• Struggle is part of the process — Stress, discipline, and hard work are not signs of failure but necessary ingredients of learning and wisdom.

• The fallacy of quick results — Believing that you can gain deep knowledge, wisdom, or mastery without effort and endurance is a dangerous misconception.