practice smart work
Reading Fran's writing on Talent versus hard work has me wondering if smart work serves as a better north star. It's not just about avoiding the "hard work" of exercising with no incrementing or bad form. The former shows how "practice makes permanent", while the latter leads to getting injured when you don't have to. It's also about how you can develop plenty of talent for and expend much hard work on something that you ultimately don't want. Check out this motivational message from somewhere in the jujutsu gym that Fran's niece attends:
A black belt is a white belt who never gave up.
While perseverance is a virtue, you might not want that black belt in the first place. You might not want any color of belt for that matter. That's perfectly fine. Eliminating what you know you don't want narrows the pool for what you truly desire.
Searching for new music gets me into that subtractive headspace. My strong filter can inform whether a song or track is worth revisiting in seconds. While it isn't foolproof, it does make quick work of discovering new bangers or a lack thereof. The latter outcome can be more helpful than you think, particularly for covering niche genres and styles. Yes, even this relatively inconsequential practice involves handling failure well.
I'd like to think that my music discovery habit harmonizes with Fran's flourishing collaboration with her niece:
She practices violin every day because she enjoys it and I enjoy taking her to her violin lessons when her dad is at work, which is most weeks.
Another blend of smart work can be found in Thereabouts' call to Know how to trade things of unequal value, where all parties give something they value far less than what is received. See their examples:
- Companies provide benefits like annual Mother's Day flower delivery for employees at a low company cost. This boosts not only employees' morale, but their familial relationships too.
- A couple divying up cleaning and cooking according to what each party enjoys results in tasty cooking and a clean kitchen.
- Being an early bird, filling an early and hard-to-cover shift, then being rewarded with pay and free food for that.
Thereabouts recommends chapter five from Stuart Diamond's book, Getting More, for more on the subject.
If you eliminate what you don't want and engage what you do, could your efforts resemble play more than work?