Stop Working "Hard," Start Working "Effective"
I have recently had several conversations with a variety of people who ask me how it is that I do all the things I do. “Where do you find the time?” “Aren’t you afraid of failing?” “You work SO HARD… you are going to kill yourself!”
In response, I have to admit that I fail a lot, I am tired a lot, I don’t have enough time a lot… but that doesn’t stop me. In fact, it spurs me on to try to figure out what I can do to make it all work. I have a relentless weakness that causes me to struggle with saying “no” to opportunities. For years, as a young person, I was desperate for an opportunity. I believed in my potential, but I just was never able to get that “break.” In retrospect, I was very successful and surprisingly so given that I was doing things that most other people with a 75% hearing deficit, relatively little money, and only a diploma in Theatre Arts, were not. So, based on an apples to apples comparison, I was doing pretty good. I just was in relentless pursuit of what I didn’t have (that is a condition that we suffer from as a society and I will get into that in a different blog post).
I was fortunate to have a family who encouraged me. Both my parents told me, and I believed them, that I could be anything I wanted to be, but I would have to work hard at it. Hard work is a wiggly phrase that implies strenuous effort will result in positive success and happiness. The cliche of “suffering for your art” has been ever-present in my pursuit of the professional career in theatre, and it is was badge of honour if you were somehow downtrodden and one of those creative types who scrounged for scraps. To have any kind of monetized success was to be a sell-out. It was a romantic idea, but really kind of stupid.
My ideas about “hard work” was pretty common. It involved pain, frustration, exhaustion, and various other oppositional concepts that would somehow enhance the successful conclusion, if you managed to get there. I was successful, but I worked very hard for that success. For example, as an actor, I had to memorize lines. My brain is very good at many things, and I have discovered it powers over time, but in my 20s when I was starting my career as an actor (actually 15 was my first pro gig) and I was horrible at memorizing lines. This was my “hard work,” just trying to remember the words to say… My problem wasn’t that I was stupid, or somehow couldn’t remember words, or had trouble reading. I just did not know HOW to memorize lines. I was working very hard, but also very ineffectively.
I was reminded of this recently when I re-watched Tim Ferriss’s TED Talk on learning. In particular, he spoke about learning to swim. I could relate to his story because I, like him, was mortified of the water, eventually learned to swim and became very successful. During his talk, it struck me that I was fortunate to have been taught to swim effectively from the get-go, and he had not. His problems were all related to things that I just took for granted because I had been taught the most effective way to swim from the very beginning.
This suddenly made me realize something that had been missing from the “work smarter, not harder” phrase that is very popular. I see many people tout various ways of being smarter about what they do. What is missing is the self-reflection and on-going experimentation that is needed to be effective.
My friend and colleague, Patrick Finn, talks about the idea of techne, and the thinking involved in understanding “how you do what you do, when you do what you do.” He talks often about the notion of the 20,000 hours not being all that great if what you are doing is 20,000 hours of ineffective work. I spent 20,000 hours and many more on memorizing lines incredibly ineffectively. What did I do? I developed an excellent practice of ineffective memorization. The key here is understanding the how of it.
Another key idea is that the how of a thing isn’t the same for everyone. Some of the top performers are not the top because they have mastered something based on someone else, they have found their own way and had coaches who helped them enhance their own way. Usain Bolt doesn’t run “right.” Jeff Healey didn’t play the guitar “right.” There are many others who excelled at what they do by working on their own version of how they do what they do.
This leads to the question of efficacy. In order learn to be more effective at a particular thing, there are some things that need to be in place.
Self-reflection. This is a practice that is, in itself, something that needs to be learned and reviewed. You can ask yourself, “how effective is my self-reflection process? How can I improve this?” Ultimately, you need to develop an effective practice for reflecting on the thing you are doing, or want to do, and how effective you are at doing it.
Inspiration. The funny thing about inspiring stuff is that it can either motivate you are debilitate you. Inspiring work can be so great is seems unachievable. The trick is to ask yourself, how can you emulate what inspires you. What are effective ways to emulate what inspires you? Reflect on that.
Production. Thinking and reflection alone are not enough. You MUST produce. That means doing something and putting it out in the world. You never be ready enough. You will not do a perfect show the first time out. Things will get in your way and conspire to stop you. Production is what happens in spite of the obstacles against it happening. Produce and publish, then reflect on how effective it was. Reflect on that.
Always sharpening, practicing, growing. The trick with being effective is that you never stop adjusting. As one friend of mine said, “clean as you go.” This is something I work on. For me, effectiveness is part preparation, part performance and part reflection. Like a knife, with every use it requires further sharpening. Practice is not just getting good at something, but also maintaining that goodness over a long period of time.
I have discovered that being effective is hard work. I think that is what we intend when we work hard at something. So, do the thing, reflect on it, and then seek guidance on how to be more effective at it. You will improve and you will eventually become great at it. Work effective(ly).