The French Art of Not Trying Too Hard

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David Epstein, in The Sports Gene, puts his finger on this detail (which is more than a mere detail), and suggests we consider chess. Chess is different from the violin. Since players are ranked according to a system of international points—“Elo points” (named after the system’s creator)—one can know the exact level of a chess player, and follow their progression precisely. In 2007, psychologists Guillermo Campitelli and Fernand Gobet conducted a study of 104 players of different levels. An average player has around 1,200 Elo points. A master has between 2,200 and 2,400. A grand master has over 2,500. They saw that to reach the threshold of 2,200 points and become a professional took an average of 11,053 hours. A bit more than the 10,000 hours for musicians. Where it gets complicated is that according to individuals, the number of hours they have spent varies from 3,000 to 23,000. Twenty thousand hours’ difference, or twenty years of “purposeful practice”! Some people need to train for eight times longer than others to reach the same level. There are also players who tot up 25,000 hours without reaching master level. And there is no guarantee they will ever reach it.

it is a skill necessary for any profession, and a lot of time is wasted in trying to delete and start again. Crossing out is no way to avoid future crossings-out—quite the contrary—for you can get into the habit of writing any old thing, telling yourself you can change it later. The draft spoils the finished copy. Try the other method; save your errors. Loved this book. It is insanely thought provoking and far more philosophical than I first thought. Some of the stories sort of go on too long, but there is incredible depth and coherence in the chapters themselves and throughout the chapters. Here is an except that is reiterated by many of those who more through the world with understanding:Yesterday, when I saw the exhibition, I thought it looked great. For a moment, anyway. Too good, actually. That does worry me a bit.”

The people who gathered in Montparnasse formed a sort of foreign legion, though the only crime they had on their conscience was that of being far from home, far from their own milieu . . . Paris had handed over this small corner to us . . . This place for the displaced was as Parisian as Notre-Dame and the Eiffel Tower. And when, like a firework, genius erupted out of this small crowd, it was still the Parisian sky that received its reflected glory. Understanding can't be focused. Distraction can make the work easier, it builds momentum. Distraction helps you to not think about what you are doing, so you are content with doing it. There are two ways to clean a burnt pan: taking considerable time and effort to scrub it, or to simply let it soak and return to it later. The first is based on effort, and the second on ease. Postponing action and letting things look after themselves is a win-win. When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Hyper specialization can cause a sort of blindness to the broader picture of what is, based on the view we have of the world and how we operate within it. Don't think about solutions, think about the problem as if the problem were a person, let it speak for itself. Do not confuse preparation with practice. Excessive practice makes you stale. i can conclude this book for you: “the key to action is getting down to it” that’s also one of the phrases the author uses in their conclusion and that’s literally all it says throughout using different words like okay i wouldn’t t know exactly cause i started skimming during chapter 2/3 but that’s what i believe through my expertise in skimming If you thought the book’s title was confusing then the chapter on “Hit the target without aiming” will throw you off. But there is a difference between trying too hard to hit a target and preparing well enough, physically and mentally, to hitWhen the Chinese painter Zao Wou-Ki first set foot in Paris in 1948, he knew only one word of French, one open-sesame that he gave to the taxi driver: “Montparnasse.” He didn’t mean the train station, he meant the mythical place that all aspiring painters dream of. He spent the rest of his life there in a studio very close to Giacometti’s. Chinese by chance, but French by the dictate of his heart.

We can see it in their laissez-faireparenting, chicstyle, haute cuisine,and enviable home cooking: They barely seem to be trying, yet the results are world-famous--thanks to a certain je ne sais quoithat is the key to a more creative, fulfilling, and productive life. But let’s ask ourselves simply and honestly: if you really think about it, who actually believes, without doubting the virtue of trying, that with 10,000 hours they could, if not become world champion, then at least reach the top level in their discipline of choice? For anyone who’s hesitating about the answer, here’s another question, which we should all be able to agree on: Who thinks that 10,000 hours of training would give them the courage to walk on a wire 400 meters off the ground? Or, more modestly, just to start small, between the towers of Notre-Dame? Grace is also a state of flow. It is a complete merge of the self with action, without the interference of intellect or other factors. The body is barely embodied by knowing and not by thinking. There is no self correction, judgement, or anything else. There is just pure action and the fluid movements of the body doing what it was meant to do. It is effortless and the result of not thinking or trying to escape from the physical state of being into a mental or emotional state of judgement or control. To be alive is to be part of the narrative of experience, to be engaged with the world. We are always caught up in the action. So we don’t have to begin, we just have to continue. No need for big decisions. To explain what he meant, Alain took the example he knew best—writing. He quoted Stendhal, who, by his own admission, wasted ten years of his life waiting for inspiration: Originally published in French as Facile: L’art français de réussir sans forcer by Éditions Michel Lafon, Neuilly-sur-Seine.When we say “France,” France itself is no more than an idea—une certaine idée—which exists in the collective imagination in its condensed form of “Paris,” the international symbol of all forms of freedom, the dream of thinkers and artists. This Paris is evoked in the alluringly titled Le Rendez-vous des étrangers (Where Strangers Meet) by Elsa Triolet, Louis Aragon’s muse—a Paris in which the Spanish Picasso, Russian Chagall, and Italian Giacometti all felt at home, and with good reason: those who, on finding themselves lost in a forest, don’t wander around in circles, this way and that, nor come to a halt in one particular spot, but just keep walking in the straightest line possible toward their given destination, refusing to change direction for unimportant reasons, particularly since it was only by chance they chose that destination in the first place: by this means, even if they don’t get to exactly the place they meant to, at least they will eventually get somewhere where the likelihood is they will be better off than in the middle of a forest. I rejected the suffering that comes from pursuing a path to which one is not suited. Effort against the grain is exhausting. It’s a sign of courage and of abnegation, but above all it’s a sign of self-deprivation. A negative virtue is not without value, but in the end someone who doesn’t like what they do will never go as far as someone who enjoys it. The former will do everything on sufferance; the latter will do it with joy, including suffering if necessary. A characteristic of a good sledge dog is that he enjoys pulling a weight for hundreds of kilometers. You don’t have to push him to do it. Eric Morris, a specialist in these matters, explains that to train sledge dogs to go very long distances, as in the Iditarod, known among enthusiasts as the “last great race on Earth” (over 1,500 kilometers through the cold, long nights of Alaska), there’s no point in using food as a reward. Negative reinforcement, a training technique that consists not in giving a reward but in taking away a punishment, doesn’t work either. “To go that distance, it’s like a bird dog sniffing down a pheasant . . . it has to be the one thing in their life that brings them the greatest amount of pleasure. They have to have the innate desire to pull [the sledge] . . . and you will find varying degrees of that in different dogs.” Remember Malcolm Gladwell? He’s a writer at the New Yorker, and I love reading his books. In Outliers, which here is used to mean “exceptional successes,” Gladwell gives a precise answer to that question “how many?” Ten thousand hours, according to him, is the “magic number of greatness.” You want to become exceptional in any given domain? It’s “easy”: you just have to devote 10,000 hours to it, or ten years, to become an expert or perform at a high level. Strangely enough, this is exactly the conclusion Stendhal arrived at: “Write every day for an hour or two. Genius or not.” Ten years of writing for one or two hours a day, somewhere between 3,652 and 7,304 (counting leap years) gets you close to 10,000 hours. You’d only need to write between two and three hours a day to get there. Stendhal seems to be saying, like Gladwell, that what we mistake for genius is simply the result of hard work; ten years’ hard work, to be precise.