The French Art of Not Trying Too Hard

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Ollivier Pourriol is a philosopher, writer, and novelist. He lives in Paris, where his lectures mixing philosophy and cinema are widely attended, and where he puts his ideas into practice over aperitifs with friends. So you don’t begin an action because you’ve thought about it long enough to judge that it’s the best of all possible choices, but because indecision is the worst of all evils, and there just isn’t time to examine them all. Seen like this, beginning is the key to completing. It means forgetting about deliberation, hesitation, and calculation and just getting on with the job. Not tomorrow, not later: here and now. Don’t wait for the first of January to make your vows. Alain says: “Making a resolution means nothing; taking up a tool is what’s needed. The thought will follow. Consider that thought cannot guide an action that has not been embarked on.” So you don’t have to renounce all thought when you act, but you must think only inside the action, at its service, and only when necessary. Thought must be as light as possible, it must not trip you up. When it is regulated by action, thought is a powerful tool. Left to itself, and to doubt, it will be your scourge. 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.

To put your whole foot on the wire all at once produces a sure though heavy kind of walking, but if you first slide your toes, then your sole, and finally your heel onto the wire, you will be able to experience the intoxicating lightness that is so magnificent at great heights. And then people will say of you: “He is strolling on his wire!” A laissez-faire guide to self-help. This is a book for those who aspire to the déshabillé, Serge-Gainsbourg-and-Jane-Birkin-morning-after look and the studied negligence of the Parisian Bobo (bourgeois-bohemian).”― The Times(London) 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.We’ve always been told to think before we speak. But thinking too much and trying to get the right words to describe our thoughts often leaves us paralysed. When I read Alain’s example – “I discover what I want to say when I open my mouth”, I was overjoyed. That is me written all over it Title: The French art of not trying too hard / Ollivier Pourriol ; translated from the French by Helen Stevenson. Other titles: Facile. English Attention is a wave on which we must learn to surf.” The most powerful and thriving industry today is the one that has our attention at the heart of it. If I want to achieve my goals then I need to ride the wave not get drowned in it Meanwhile, let us return to Philippe Petit, August 7, 1974—at the moment when the elevator wheel starts to turn, his friend Jean-François passes him his pole, and he has only a minute left in which to decide if—for all his tiredness and fear—he’s going to go for it, or not: 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.

It’s exactly the same with living. There is no preparation for life. So you need to skip the warm-up. Watch your attitude. If you set off without a safety net, proudly, you learn how to live just as you learn how to ride a bike or a horse: by accepting the propulsion offered by life itself. Living like this is constantly surprising . . . OK, but in a good way or in a bad way? Nothing’s ever exactly what you thought it was going to be. You’re never adequately prepared. But the longer you hesitate, the harder it will be. Don’t wait until you’re sure before you act. What’s going to happen in the future? You’ll have to get there to find out. Where do we start? That’s always been the big question. More often than not, we keep planning and eventually stagnate. “If you don’t know how to get out of this kind of stagnation, do what Stendhal did: borrow your first sentence or your first action from someone else, and continue it.” Like drafting or slipstreaming in cycling or learning a language by imitating others, don't start, continueIn the realm of love, what could be less seductive than someone who's trying to seduce you? Seduction is the art of succeeding without trying, and that's a lesson the French have mastered. A thought-provoking and delightful book. Pourriol dismisses it as an airport read. Yet somehow, apparently without effort, he has turned it into so much more. . . . [It is like] a pastry: rich and light rather than stuff to be endlessly chewed over.”― Daily Mail According to the rule of 10,000 hours, though, it’s the number of hours spent training that should explain the variations. Now, according to another study (also conducted by Ericsson, this time with darts players rather than violinists), after fifteen years of practice, only 28 percent of the variation in performance can be attributed to training. To put it another way, you can train your whole life without ever catching up on the difference between yourself and the best, or acquiring real expertise. The rule of 10,000 hours, David Epstein concludes, with some humor, would be better called the rule of 10,000 years. What can we learn from Stendhal’s example? Not everyone wants to become a writer. But “never make fun of the art of writing,” Alain says, Because if I went on feeling as satisfied as I was yesterday, that would mean—in contradiction to what I generally think, wouldn’t you say?—that either I’ve lost my critical faculty or I’ve now come to a point where there’s nothing left for me to do.”

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. This is not a new idea in France: since Montaigne, philosophers have suggested that a certain je ne sais quoi is the key to a more creative, fulfilling and productive existence. We can see it in their laissez faire parenting, their chic style, their haute cuisine and enviable home cooking - the French barely seem to be trying, yet the results are world famous. 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. 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 hitWhy ten years, when by working ten hours a day you’d get to 10,000 hours in a thousand days, which is less than three years? Because it’s not enough to accumulate hours of practice; the practice has to be deliberate, it has to represent an effort to achieve a specific goal, ability, or gesture that as yet eludes you. To put it another way, you need to feel the time passing, it needs to not be easy. This is quite different from the so-called ten hours a day spent by Zola or Flaubert, who seem like workaholics when in fact they spent most of their time dreaming of the right word, “fiddling around” with their sentences like Giacometti fiddling around with his clay; in short, doing what they liked best, which takes a lot of deliberately wasted time and a certain kind of nonchalance. Nothing to do with continuous effort, in any case. Three or four hours a day of deliberate practice, preferably spread out over several sessions, would therefore be a maximum, because the effort of all that attention is exhausting. The rest of the day should be spent resting, or in comparatively less intense activities: reading, reflection, strategy, associated leisure activities, and so on. Three to four hours a day with one day of rest a week, and two weeks of holiday a year, gets you to 1,000 hours a year, or 10,000 hours in ten years. Despite the flaws of the 10,000 hours rule well documented, we are still bombarded with variations of the same. Through the example of a failed experiment and other references, the author drives home the point that working hard is not enough

True courage, for him, turned out to be recognizing his limits and his humanity, and renouncing his desire to be all-powerful. He discovered the Stoics’ precept that if we want to be happy, we need to focus on the things we can control, and leave the rest to the gods. In this sense his experiment taught him something, and his failure is a success, because he became aware of his own physical reality, and of reality itself. One point in his favor: it took only 6,000 hours for him to realize this and to become an expert in stoicism; that’s 4,000 hours fewer than predicted. That’s not counting the two years of doubt and denial, which makes 365 a 2 × 24 (since depression is twenty-four hours a day), equaling the 17,500 hours of “purposeful depression” that it took him to realize that the rule of 10,000 hours perhaps didn’t exist or wasn’t valid for him. The rule of 10,000 hours flatters us because it allows us to think that with enough work, we can become whatever we want. That everything depends on individual will and a sense of effort. If performance was only about training, if 10,000 hours really were sufficient to compensate for natural differences, why continue to separate men and women in competitions? Because, as David Epstein shows, just because we want to doesn’t mean we can. To think you didn’t become a golf champion after 10,000 hours because you didn’t work hard enough is as misguided as to believe that a champion doesn’t need to train, that they just have to exist to win. The temptation of 10,000 hours, for all its whiff of egalitarianism, offers an even more dangerous illusion than the inverse temptation to just let it all hang out. You can’t afford to skimp on training, nor to underestimate your limits. We shouldn’t say “if you want to, you can” but “if you can, you’re right to want it.” Everything comes down to attitude imagination and prepositions. You can struggle or you can relax, accept, and give in. Fluency is fluid, and to be fluent in a language means to be fluid. Pretending is a precondition for success. Do not resist, do not fight; simply be, allow, adopt, and absorb. Enumeration - An overview. A naming of parts. A panorama. Regularly widen your gaze so that you do not miss the big picture, the grand scheme. Keep a macro and micro view all at once. Make sure that everything is included.

Summary

Divide up the difficulties - Think go 1 thing at a time. Don't try to grasp everything all at once. Don't rush. One step at a time. Once everything is cut up into digestible pieces, it must be put into: