Accountability

I actually am posting this a day late since I accidentally procrastinated. I feel like nowadays I’m not being terribly unproductive, but it’s more because of the fact that I have a lot of time as opposed to fighting my productivity tendencies. I need to push myself more and resist the urge because when I do start working, it feels good.

I’m writing this latter half during work so it’ll be somewhat shorter haha.

Productive Thinking

Continuing from my previous post, humans often perceive certain things as much easier than they actually are, normally by watching someone do it with apparent ease. In fact, this happens so much that we have multiple terms referring to this: “practiced ease,” “apparent ease,” and “effortlessly.” If this happens to us so often, why don’t we learn from our mistake and realize that tasks that look easy on the surface are actually difficult to replicate? Maybe this happens in terms of logical, conscious processing, but even if you cognitively acknowledge that something is going to be harder than it looks, our initial subconscious impression will still think that the task at hand is easy.

To answer this, the definition of “easy” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is: 1) causing or involving little difficulty or discomfort or 2) requiring or indicating little effort, thought, or reflection. We will be focusing on these definitions of the word.

The reason why we subconsciously believe that riding a skateboard looks easy after watching someone pass us on the street or that throwing a perfect spiral looks easy after watching an NFL quarterback is that it is easy…for them. Our subconscious can deduce that little effort is being put into the action, and therefore, by our definition, it is “easy.” But, why do we then turn around and claim that it’s not easy the moment we try it?

When we finally attempt the task, normally for the first time, it requires a large amount of effort, typically with minimal results. The amount of effort and results will depend on the activity and its associated learning curve, but the end result is the same: because the activity causes more than a little difficulty/discomfort/effort, it is no longer “easy.” All of a sudden, internally we peg the activity as not easy as opposed to our initial impression.

This tendency of humans to switch is interesting. Even if we logically acknowledge the difficulty of a task, few can genuinely convince their subconscious that a task that looks easy is actually easy. The moment we attempt it, however, this association of difficulty is immediately apparent. This illuminates several things: the human inability to match conscious logic to subconscious feelings, and the value of experience/perspective to shape our ideas.

In the case of mastering a task such that it actually does become easy (the muscle memory of throwing a ball, the ability to whip through scales on an instrument), the difficult part is not only the first couple attempts, but rather the journey to get to a spot where it actually is easy. And at the extreme upper echelon of “masters” of a particular task, the barrier is so high that few can hope to reach it–it is extremely difficult to match the same journey that others have taken. Malcolm Gladwell actually has a rule about this: he claims that a true master has put in 10,000 hours into their respective task.

Whether or not Gladwell is right or not, the general sentiment is there. Instead of dismissing seemingly easy tasks as just that or even thinking that it’ll be too difficult to ever reach that level of practiced ease, think about the number of hours and effort it takes to get there. If it’s worth it, then often time and dedication is all one needs to reach a high level. After all, it takes effort to make things effortless.