0:00:01.506,0:00:03.708
I feel so fortunate that my first job

0:00:03.708,0:00:06.140
was working at the Museum of Modern Art

0:00:06.140,0:00:09.594
on a retrospective of painter Elizabeth Murray.

0:00:09.594,0:00:11.980
I learned so much from her.

0:00:11.980,0:00:13.748
After the curator Robert Storr

0:00:13.748,0:00:15.267
selected all the paintings

0:00:15.267,0:00:18.019
from her lifetime body of work,

0:00:18.019,0:00:21.661
I loved looking at the paintings from the 1970s.

0:00:21.661,0:00:24.217
There were some motifs and elements

0:00:24.217,0:00:27.723
that would come up again later in her life.

0:00:27.723,0:00:29.362
I remember asking her

0:00:29.362,0:00:31.920
what she thought of those early works.

0:00:31.920,0:00:33.384
If you didn't know they were hers,

0:00:33.384,0:00:35.954
you might not have been able to guess.

0:00:35.954,0:00:38.877
She told me that a few didn't quite meet

0:00:38.877,0:00:42.484
her own mark for what she wanted them to be.

0:00:42.484,0:00:43.913
One of the works, in fact,

0:00:43.913,0:00:45.434
so didn't meet her mark,

0:00:45.434,0:00:48.406
she had set it out in the trash in her studio,

0:00:48.406,0:00:50.247
and her neighbor had taken it

0:00:50.247,0:00:52.817
because she saw its value.

0:00:52.817,0:00:55.766
In that moment, my view of success

0:00:55.766,0:00:58.282
and creativity changed.

0:00:58.282,0:01:01.170
I realized that success is a moment,

0:01:01.170,0:01:03.106
but what we're always celebrating

0:01:03.106,0:01:07.114
is creativity and mastery.

0:01:07.114,0:01:10.751
But this is the thing: What gets us to convert success

0:01:10.751,0:01:12.980
into mastery?

0:01:12.980,0:01:15.771
This is a question I've long asked myself.

0:01:15.771,0:01:18.352
I think it comes when we start to value

0:01:18.352,0:01:21.944
the gift of a near win.

0:01:21.944,0:01:24.139
I started to understand this when I went

0:01:24.139,0:01:26.122
on one cold May day

0:01:26.122,0:01:28.673
to watch a set of varsity archers,

0:01:28.673,0:01:30.970
all women as fate would have it,

0:01:30.970,0:01:33.050
at the northern tip of Manhattan

0:01:33.050,0:01:36.469
at Columbia's Baker Athletics Complex.

0:01:36.469,0:01:40.138
I wanted to see what's called archer's paradox,

0:01:40.138,0:01:42.969
the idea that in order to actually hit your target,

0:01:42.969,0:01:47.411
you have to aim at something slightly skew from it.

0:01:47.411,0:01:49.404
I stood and watched as the coach

0:01:49.404,0:01:52.118
drove up these women in this gray van,

0:01:52.118,0:01:55.096
and they exited with this kind of relaxed focus.

0:01:55.096,0:01:57.990
One held a half-eaten ice cream cone in one hand

0:01:57.990,0:02:00.507
and arrows in the left with yellow fletching.

0:02:00.507,0:02:03.190
And they passed me and smiled,

0:02:03.190,0:02:04.990
but they sized me up as they

0:02:04.990,0:02:06.609
made their way to the turf,

0:02:06.609,0:02:08.363
and spoke to each other not with words

0:02:08.363,0:02:11.080
but with numbers, degrees, I thought,

0:02:11.080,0:02:12.378
positions for how they might plan

0:02:12.378,0:02:14.911
to hit their target.

0:02:14.911,0:02:17.294
I stood behind one archer as her coach

0:02:17.294,0:02:19.316
stood in between us to maybe assess

0:02:19.316,0:02:21.773
who might need support, and watched her,

0:02:21.773,0:02:23.860
and I didn't understand how even one

0:02:23.860,0:02:26.711
was going to hit the ten ring.

0:02:26.711,0:02:29.359
The ten ring from the standard 75-yard distance,

0:02:29.359,0:02:32.269
it looks as small as a matchstick tip

0:02:32.269,0:02:34.366
held out at arm's length.

0:02:34.366,0:02:37.645
And this is while holding 50 pounds of draw weight

0:02:37.645,0:02:40.352
on each shot.

0:02:40.352,0:02:43.044
She first hit a seven, I remember, and then a nine,

0:02:43.044,0:02:44.324
and then two tens,

0:02:44.324,0:02:45.560
and then the next arrow

0:02:45.560,0:02:47.779
didn't even hit the target.

0:02:47.779,0:02:49.780
And I saw that gave her more tenacity,

0:02:49.780,0:02:52.566
and she went after it again and again.

0:02:52.566,0:02:55.512
For three hours this went on.

0:02:55.512,0:02:57.933
At the end of the practice, one of the archers

0:02:57.933,0:03:00.519
was so taxed that she lied out on the ground

0:03:00.519,0:03:02.460
just star-fished,

0:03:02.460,0:03:04.492
her head looking up at the sky,

0:03:04.492,0:03:07.104
trying to find what T.S. Eliot might call

0:03:07.104,0:03:10.990
that still point of the turning world.

0:03:10.990,0:03:13.005
It's so rare in American culture,

0:03:13.005,0:03:16.015
there's so little that's vocational about it anymore,

0:03:16.015,0:03:18.609
to look at what doggedness looks like

0:03:18.609,0:03:20.720
with this level of exactitude,

0:03:20.720,0:03:23.101
what it means to align your body posture

0:03:23.101,0:03:26.468
for three hours in order to hit a target,

0:03:26.468,0:03:30.538
pursuing a kind of excellence in obscurity.

0:03:30.538,0:03:32.763
But I stayed because I realized I was witnessing

0:03:32.763,0:03:35.098
what's so rare to glimpse,

0:03:35.098,0:03:38.971
that difference between success and mastery.

0:03:38.971,0:03:41.595
So success is hitting that ten ring,

0:03:41.595,0:03:43.711
but mastery is knowing that it means nothing

0:03:43.711,0:03:47.267
if you can't do it again and again.

0:03:47.267,0:03:50.988
Mastery is not just the same as excellence, though.

0:03:50.988,0:03:52.821
It's not the same as success,

0:03:52.821,0:03:55.054
which I see as an event,

0:03:55.054,0:03:56.640
a moment in time,

0:03:56.640,0:03:59.938
and a label that the world confers upon you.

0:03:59.938,0:04:03.072
Mastery is not a commitment to a goal

0:04:03.072,0:04:05.977
but to a constant pursuit.

0:04:05.977,0:04:07.854
What gets us to do this,

0:04:07.854,0:04:10.400
what get us to forward thrust more

0:04:10.400,0:04:14.057
is to value the near win.

0:04:14.057,0:04:16.209
How many times have we designated something

0:04:16.209,0:04:19.080
a classic, a masterpiece even,

0:04:19.080,0:04:22.658
while its creator considers it hopelessly unfinished,

0:04:22.658,0:04:24.881
riddled with difficulties and flaws,

0:04:24.881,0:04:27.899
in other words, a near win?

0:04:27.899,0:04:29.793
Elizabeth Murray surprised me

0:04:29.793,0:04:33.003
with her admission about her earlier paintings.

0:04:33.013,0:04:36.665
Painter Paul Cézanne so often[br]thought his works were incomplete

0:04:36.665,0:04:38.487
that he would deliberately leave them aside

0:04:38.487,0:04:41.037
with the intention of picking them back up again,

0:04:41.037,0:04:42.780
but at the end of his life,

0:04:42.780,0:04:44.995
the result was that he had only signed

0:04:44.995,0:04:47.735
10 percent of his paintings.

0:04:47.735,0:04:51.885
His favorite novel was "The [Unknown][br]Masterpiece" by Honoré de Balzac,

0:04:51.885,0:04:57.481
and he felt the protagonist was the painter himself.

0:04:57.481,0:04:59.415
Franz Kafka saw incompletion

0:04:59.415,0:05:02.666
when others would find only works to praise,

0:05:02.666,0:05:05.099
so much so that he wanted all of his diaries,

0:05:05.099,0:05:07.196
manuscripts, letters and even sketches

0:05:07.196,0:05:09.525
burned upon his death.

0:05:09.525,0:05:12.320
His friend refused to honor the request,

0:05:12.320,0:05:13.998
and because of that, we now have all the works

0:05:13.998,0:05:15.767
we now do by Kafka:

0:05:15.767,0:05:19.160
"America," "The Trial" and "The Castle,"

0:05:19.160,0:05:22.785
a work so incomplete it even stops mid-sentence.

0:05:22.785,0:05:25.320
The pursuit of mastery, in other words,

0:05:25.320,0:05:29.958
is an ever-onward almost.

0:05:29.958,0:05:31.934
"Lord, grant that I desire

0:05:31.934,0:05:34.010
more than I can accomplish,"

0:05:34.010,0:05:35.569
Michelangelo implored,

0:05:35.569,0:05:39.000
as if to that Old Testament God on the Sistine Chapel,

0:05:39.000,0:05:40.949
and he himself was that Adam

0:05:40.949,0:05:42.455
with his finger outstretched

0:05:42.455,0:05:47.028
and not quite touching that God's hand.

0:05:47.028,0:05:51.616
Mastery is in the reaching, not the arriving.

0:05:51.616,0:05:54.921
It's in constantly wanting to close that gap

0:05:54.921,0:05:59.119
between where you are and where you want to be.

0:05:59.119,0:06:02.707
Mastery is about sacrificing for your craft

0:06:02.707,0:06:06.925
and not for the sake of crafting your career.

0:06:06.925,0:06:09.590
How many inventors and untold entrepreneurs

0:06:09.590,0:06:12.359
live out this phenomenon?

0:06:12.359,0:06:13.864
We see it even in the life

0:06:13.864,0:06:16.674
of the indomitable Arctic explorer Ben Saunders,

0:06:16.674,0:06:18.348
who tells me that his triumphs

0:06:18.348,0:06:20.271
are not merely the result

0:06:20.271,0:06:22.066
of a grand achievement,

0:06:22.066,0:06:27.060
but of the propulsion of a lineage of near wins.

0:06:27.060,0:06:30.796
We thrive when we stay at our own leading edge.

0:06:30.796,0:06:33.491
It's a wisdom understood by Duke Ellington,

0:06:33.491,0:06:36.417
who said that his favorite song out of his repertoire

0:06:36.417,0:06:38.552
was always the next one,

0:06:38.552,0:06:42.211
always the one he had yet to compose.

0:06:42.211,0:06:44.340
Part of the reason that the near win

0:06:44.340,0:06:46.632
is inbuilt to mastery

0:06:46.632,0:06:48.985
is because the greater our proficiency,

0:06:48.985,0:06:51.145
the more clearly we might see

0:06:51.145,0:06:54.363
that we don't know all that we thought we did.

0:06:54.363,0:06:56.994
It's called the Dunning–Kruger effect.

0:06:56.994,0:06:59.921
The Paris Review got it out of James Baldwin

0:06:59.921,0:07:00.949
when they asked him,

0:07:00.949,0:07:03.646
"What do you think increases with knowledge?"

0:07:03.646,0:07:08.328
and he said, "You learn how little you know."

0:07:08.328,0:07:10.652
Success motivates us, but a near win

0:07:10.652,0:07:13.527
can propel us in an ongoing quest.

0:07:13.527,0:07:15.646
One of the most vivid examples of this comes

0:07:15.646,0:07:17.436
when we look at the difference

0:07:17.436,0:07:19.382
between Olympic silver medalists

0:07:19.382,0:07:22.333
and bronze medalists after a competition.

0:07:22.333,0:07:24.946
Thomas Gilovich and his team from Cornell

0:07:24.946,0:07:27.092
studied this difference and found

0:07:27.092,0:07:29.616
that the frustration silver medalists feel

0:07:29.616,0:07:31.577
compared to bronze, who are typically a bit

0:07:31.577,0:07:34.050
more happy to have just not received fourth place

0:07:34.050,0:07:35.729
and not medaled at all,

0:07:35.729,0:07:37.684
gives silver medalists a focus

0:07:37.684,0:07:40.107
on follow-up competition.

0:07:40.107,0:07:42.389
We see it even in the gambling industry

0:07:42.389,0:07:44.375
that once picked up on this phenomenon

0:07:44.375,0:07:45.867
of the near win

0:07:45.867,0:07:48.130
and created these scratch-off tickets

0:07:48.130,0:07:51.458
that had a higher than average rate of near wins

0:07:51.458,0:07:54.267
and so compelled people to buy more tickets

0:07:54.267,0:07:56.216
that they were called heart-stoppers,

0:07:56.216,0:07:59.279
and were set on a gambling industry set of abuses

0:07:59.279,0:08:02.670
in Britain in the 1970s.

0:08:02.670,0:08:04.919
The reason the near win has a propulsion

0:08:04.919,0:08:07.803
is because it changes our view of the landscape

0:08:07.803,0:08:10.454
and puts our goals, which we tend to put

0:08:10.454,0:08:13.059
at a distance, into more proximate vicinity

0:08:13.059,0:08:14.905
to where we stand.

0:08:14.905,0:08:18.083
If I ask you to envision what a[br]great day looks like next week,

0:08:18.083,0:08:21.788
you might describe it in more general terms.

0:08:21.788,0:08:25.439
But if I ask you to describe a[br]great day at TED tomorrow,

0:08:25.439,0:08:28.900
you might describe it with granular, practical clarity.

0:08:28.900,0:08:30.563
And this is what a near win does.

0:08:30.563,0:08:33.109
It gets us to focus on what, right now,

0:08:33.109,0:08:37.890
we plan to do to address that mountain in our sights.

0:08:37.890,0:08:41.046
It's Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who in 1984

0:08:41.046,0:08:43.052
missed taking the gold in the heptathlon

0:08:43.052,0:08:45.313
by one third of a second,

0:08:45.313,0:08:47.194
and her husband predicted that would give her

0:08:47.194,0:08:51.156
the tenacity she needed in follow-up competition.

0:08:51.156,0:08:54.528
In 1988, she won the gold in the heptathlon

0:08:54.528,0:08:58.703
and set a record of 7,291 points,

0:08:58.703,0:09:03.810
a score that no athlete has come very close to since.

0:09:03.810,0:09:06.521
We thrive not when we've done it all,

0:09:06.521,0:09:09.928
but when we still have more to do.

0:09:09.928,0:09:12.010
I stand here thinking and wondering

0:09:12.010,0:09:13.708
about all the different ways

0:09:13.708,0:09:16.105
that we might even manufacture a near win

0:09:16.105,0:09:17.370
in this room,

0:09:17.370,0:09:19.439
how your lives might play this out,

0:09:19.439,0:09:24.230
because I think on some gut level we do know this.

0:09:24.230,0:09:25.982
We know that we thrive when we stay

0:09:25.982,0:09:27.499
at our own leading edge,

0:09:27.499,0:09:29.965
and it's why the deliberate incomplete

0:09:29.965,0:09:32.458
is inbuilt into creation myths.

0:09:32.458,0:09:34.980
In Navajo culture, some craftsmen and women

0:09:34.980,0:09:37.423
would deliberately put an imperfection

0:09:37.423,0:09:39.070
in textiles and ceramics.

0:09:39.070,0:09:41.861
It's what's called a spirit line,

0:09:41.861,0:09:43.970
a deliberate flaw in the pattern

0:09:43.970,0:09:46.998
to give the weaver or maker a way out,

0:09:46.998,0:09:51.670
but also a reason to continue making work.

0:09:51.670,0:09:53.447
Masters are not experts because they take

0:09:53.447,0:09:56.065
a subject to its conceptual end.

0:09:56.065,0:09:57.774
They're masters because they realize

0:09:57.774,0:10:00.352
that there isn't one.

0:10:00.352,0:10:03.462
Now it occurred to me, as I thought about this,

0:10:03.462,0:10:05.250
why the archery coach

0:10:05.250,0:10:07.420
told me at the end of that practice,

0:10:07.420,0:10:09.665
out of earshot of his archers,

0:10:09.665,0:10:11.642
that he and his colleagues never feel

0:10:11.642,0:10:13.902
they can do enough for their team,

0:10:13.902,0:10:16.779
never feel there are enough visualization techniques

0:10:16.779,0:10:19.566
and posture drills to help them overcome

0:10:19.566,0:10:21.846
those constant near wins.

0:10:21.846,0:10:24.293
It didn't sound like a complaint, exactly,

0:10:24.293,0:10:26.886
but just a way to let me know,

0:10:26.886,0:10:28.366
a kind of tender admission,

0:10:28.366,0:10:31.631
to remind me that he knew[br]he was giving himself over

0:10:31.631,0:10:34.786
to a voracious, unfinished path

0:10:34.786,0:10:37.711
that always required more.

0:10:37.711,0:10:40.860
We build out of the unfinished idea,

0:10:40.860,0:10:45.316
even if that idea is our former self.

0:10:45.316,0:10:48.331
This is the dynamic of mastery.

0:10:48.331,0:10:51.364
Coming close to what you thought you wanted

0:10:51.364,0:10:54.090
can help you attain more than you ever dreamed

0:10:54.090,0:10:55.701
you could.

0:10:55.701,0:10:58.575
It's what I have to imagine Elizabeth Murray

0:10:58.575,0:11:00.590
was thinking when I saw her smiling

0:11:00.590,0:11:02.851
at those early paintings one day

0:11:02.851,0:11:05.922
in the galleries.

0:11:05.922,0:11:08.288
Even if we created utopias, I believe

0:11:08.288,0:11:11.590
we would still have the incomplete.

0:11:11.590,0:11:13.754
Completion is a goal,

0:11:13.754,0:11:17.747
but we hope it is never the end.

0:11:17.747,0:11:20.528
Thank you.

0:11:20.528,0:11:24.384
(Applause)