What a Whiteboard Can Teach Us About Mastery

Here’s me with the whiteboard my clients and I use for Saturday 7 AM workouts. Since January, we’ve written down about 20 sessions. We missed some weeks in the summer, but we filled another board and are ready for Q4.

At first glance, it looks like a mess of dates and exercises. But it’s really a picture of something George Leonard wrote about in his book Mastery.

Leonard argued that most people misunderstand progress. They expect constant upward motion — more results, more excitement, more novelty. But the real path of mastery is different. It’s long plateaus punctuated by brief breakthroughs. It’s practice, repetition, and patience.

That’s what this board shows.

No single Saturday was extraordinary. Nobody left saying, “That was the day everything changed.” But stack 20 of them, then 40, then 100, and you see the truth: the ordinary becomes extraordinary when it compounds.

The value isn’t in any single workout — it’s in the discipline of showing up, writing it down, and adding to the pile. The whiteboard doesn’t lie. It shows the work.

The plateaus are part of the story. Some Saturdays felt electric, others sluggish. Some workouts were fun, others felt like a grind. But that’s mastery: the willingness to train through the plateaus because you trust that progress is building underneath.

Most people quit in the plateau. They get bored. They chase novelty. They never stick long enough to see what happens when practice becomes second nature. But those who keep filling the board build something far more powerful than excitement — they build mastery.

That’s why this whiteboard matters to me. It’s not just a schedule. It’s a log of patience, persistence, and practice.

As we step into Q4, the board is blank again. Most people will use the season as an excuse to fall off. But the lesson of mastery is clear: the people who keep showing up, even when it’s cold, busy, or inconvenient, are the ones who emerge stronger.

The whiteboard doesn’t record intentions. It records actions. And over time, that’s what mastery looks like. - Mike

Board full Saturday, Sep 27, 2025