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After you've spent a lot of time exerting yourself, then you can let go and let your non-doing take over. I've experienced this myself with coding and music and language. Once you've got it "in your fingers", learning to relax is a big part of the Inner Game of Whatever.

But don't tell me that Katie Ledecky didn't put in a huge amount of effort in her training before her world-class swimming performances. That's a lie, guaranteed to mislead many people to not trying anything because it feels like effort.

I know we (Westerners) are often fascinated by Eastern philosophies and all these "sounds of clap of one hand".

However, this article crossed a line... by a mile.

"turning a steering wheel.... all need exactly the amount of energy that they need"

In theory, it's true. In practice, there are activities like "holding a cup". if you do not have enough grip, you may unfortunately spill the coffee on the floor. If you don't have enough grip while doing a sharp turn, it could be literally fatal. As a result, it is wise for the absolute majority of people in high-risk situations to exert more power than necessary. The energy investments are small, but changes in probabilities are significant.

And the rest of the article pretty much prophesies a flow slate. Yeah, in this state, things feel effortless. However, it misses two things. To learn how to get to this flow state, like a lot of people pointed out, you need TONS and TONS and TONS of practice where you exert WAY more than you minimally need. Oh... And on top of that, in the flow state, you perceive that things are effortless. And this is mostly about a perception rather than reality. Yes, if you are extremely experienced and get to flow state, you are spending less energy than an absolute beginner, but not zero... again, by a mile.

When I was a child, I learned badminton from a friend[0]. He was a fairly highly ranked player in our nation and so was very good. One of the first things he said was "Don't be stiff. Relax your muscles and hit the shuttlecock fluidly not rigidly.". I couldn't. When I finally could, it's because I was much better than I was when I started. The fluidity came after some degree of unconscious muscular competence, rather than prior to.

This aligns with what I know about Flow State: it requires some degree of unconscious competence before you can access it. When playing table-tennis, I could not access it when I was rubbish, but when I reached some degree of skill I wasn't thinking while I was playing, I was playing instinctually.

Over the years, many people have given me the same "don't be stiff; relax your muscles; move fluidly" and some of the time it has worked, but it has never worked when I did not have competence because I did not even know what it was to relax something.

So perhaps after one has acquired a base amount of skill at something, someone could "expend no effort", but that's just being in flow state.

0: not as a coach-student relationship but so that he could have someone to play against.

This is the worst kind of post. If you read it carefully it barely says anything and the thing it does say is highly suspect or just wrong. I suspect most of the time when someone wins a race, for example, they aren't exerting zero effort, although the author has found an anecdote or two to the contrary, for example.

Half of all math proofs are guys walking around in nature or sitting in it. The last one I read was Ken Ono's breaththrough on partition numbers ... he was on a hike with a friend.

I might also add hard work gets you to a frustration point you might need first before it comes in its time ... IOW I'm not 100% sold on it just comes for free ... maybe better expressed as know when it's time to take a break too.

>Let me share my slightly unusual definition of “effort”: it’s the felt experience of expending energy beyond what an activity requires

How about finding a word that actually captures your meaning, or defining a new one?

I asked an LLM - it came back with "overexertion".

>Using this definition, it’s clear that the appropriate amount of [overexertion] for any activity is zero.

> Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished

I don't know, you ever seen a video of a cheetah hunting a gazelle? Lots of hurrying going on there.

Appropriate amount of effort for what purpose? Is it appropriate for me to use ChatGPT on my mathematics test because it is the least effort required to pass the test? Or is it inappropriate because the goal should have been to learn the material?

Even something as straightforward as picking up a coffee mug runs into this. Just enough effort to be able to lift it without dropping, or enough to hang onto it if someone happens to bump into me?

I'm not disagreeing with the article, just pointing out that there is nuance that is easy to miss.

(Ok, I got a little triggered by the title, since I was just thinking about how 80% of my kid's mathematics class made it through by using ChatGPT for all of the homeworks, quizzes, and even the tests. The teacher doesn't want to police it, the administration doesn't care, and those kids learned almost nothing. "Zero effort == good" is a dangerous statement out of context.)

One of the more recent experience I've had pushing a skill from conscious competence to unconscious competence is in a multiplayer video game that involved very large scale fights that literally hundreds of players participate in (and I'm using the word literally literally here). Imagine Starcraft or a Civilization game, but rather than one player controlling an army of units, each unit is 1-is-to-1 controlled by a player.

I clearly recall how I started out, I was lost in a deluge of character models and health bars surrounding my screen, moving about, particles flashing from abilities. I had a difficult time listening to calls by the leader of my group (effectively, everyone is being coordinated by 1 person in a voice call) while trying to make sense of what's around me. I couldn't tell when I was in danger, or where I was supposed to be relative to the rest of the group. It was intense trying to parse everything around me.

But after years of practice (playing at a decently competitive level with other like-minded players who wanted to truly dedicate time to something they found worthwhile), everything in those fights just becomes clear. There's no friction in the hundreds of character models as they enter and exit my screen, reading the flow of combat is as easy as reading a cozy piece of fiction.

I think the way I'd describe the whole experience of learning this part of the game is I learned how to separate important states to non-states. When I started out, I did not know what information to immediately prune out. I was busy juggling a network of useless information and made a mesh of "non-states" that filled my mental capacity. The more I learned, the more I could actually build an intuition of real or important states to be aware of. This one flash of red means I'm in danger. This flash of yellow from an ally means I should advance more aggressively, etc.

If anyone's interested at what I'm describing, here's someone's gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaZhda3rWvU

I agree with this. I think a lot of people try too hard, and it backfires, as exhaustion, or strain, that end up contributing more to failure than success.

I believe it's because working hard is actually easier than having good discipline, so people attempt to make up for their lack of "actually having made any progress", by trying to "make a ton of progress really fast" to catch up for it.

This is a completely obvious conclusion with an unexpected definition of "effort" to justify a click-bait title.

Appropriate amount of effort is the least required to make it work. Without effort object would fall to the floor because grip was too weak.

One reason why performance of a master (art, music, sport, whatever) looks so effortless is because of crude and unforgiving practice.

> "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." — Lao Tzu

> Nature is an enormous flow of energy, yet nature makes no effort.

I don't get these. What are they referring to? The nature I'm looking at, at all scales, from viruses, to animals, to storms, it's all so violent. Is it just that it's all in the eye of the beholder?

Has the author redefined “effort” such that the amount of effort required to carry a boulder up a mountain is, by his own definition, always zero?

> Let me share my slightly unusual definition of “effort”: it’s the felt experience of expending energy beyond what an activity requires

I think Aldous Huxley said it well:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/614121-it-s-dark-because-yo...

> When you try so hard all the time, that level of effort feels familiar and you stop noticing it.

> Put another way, years of overdoing mis-calibrate your senses so effort feels right and ease feels wrong. ...

This is the first time I've seen in writing something I've felt deeply for a long time.

I have a long history of (sub-clinical) stress and anxiety problems and experimenting with mindfulness and embodied exercises etc it hit me so strongly that it feels alien/wrong to be relaxed, and that very fact makes it harder to be so.

It sucks.

I’ve noticed something like this while playing the game Hollow Knight: Silksong. Most of the time when I was trying to beat a difficult boss, I wasn’t trying to beat it while it’s hard and would take a lot of effort. Instead I was working on making beating the boss easy (which was hard). So typically by the time I would beat a boss, it did feel like comparatively little effort was being expended.

The important point here is that you can become much more effective by cutting wasted activity.

Wasted motion and power saps your time, energy, and motivation. It obscures your vision. It creates unnecessary risk. It decreases your awareness and adaptability.

Examples from my own life: - Teach kids to self-assess using an explicit rubric, instead of delivering feedback yourself every step of the way.

- Move slower and use the minimum power possible when doing chores.

- Jog more slowly and stay in zone 2, where you feel like you can go forever.

- Determine the smallest software performance test scale that makes the issue you’re trying to resolve reliably apparent.

- Resolve as much uncertainty as you can about new software features through separately scripted spikes before attempting to orchestrate them in the full codebase.

- Invest passively in index funds.

- Strip down presentations and pause a few seconds after most sentences. That lets the message sink in, gives you space to decide if you need to say more, and gives the audience a chance to respond if you’re not addressing their confusion effectively.

> "Money don't matter", - rich people

> "Looks don't matter", - attractive people

> "Just relax", - world class champions

"You don't get your best performances by trying harder" is just another way of saying that our talents come so naturally that they don't feel like work.

Does that mean that if you're trying, you're fighting a losing uphill battle against something you'll never excel at? I think many skills are learned and must be earned with discipline. But the culture places excessive weight on excelling in specific fields that most people simply can't brute-force. Hence the prevalence of chemical assistance at the highest ends of productivity, intellectual competition, and athletics.

We probably need to place more emphasis on doing things that come naturally to us. Emphasis on doing. But also enjoy downtime and not-doing occasionally.

Confusion of effect for cause. Unconscious or effortless processing by the brain is usually way more accurate and reliable than conscious processing, but outside of being "gifted" you only get to consistent unconscious processing after years of training and conscious practice that ingrain muscle memory etc.

Re : running relaxed, it is said that the real marathon is the training you put in, and the race itself should feel like a celebration. I am not anywhere near elite level but felt that for a lot of races. The hardships of the training enables a state of deep calm, joy and feeling like you are flying the morning of the actual race. Nights before races are often very bad, like a last storm before everything clears and your mind is finally empty when you get into the corral. Then, with a clear mind, you proceed to run with joy despite being physically tired by the training and sleepless night.

Hell no, the amount of problems caused by people half-assing everything they do is enormous. The write fails to take onto account that the question of just how much effort us required is often highly subjective. It's more a matter of values than anything objective.

How well do you care about something to figure out just how well you could possibly do, when doing better matters in outcomes?

Taking the advice of TFA to heart confirms an attitude of never really caring to do anything well.

Of course, for many things, it is probably not productive to spend too much effort on it.

Yes its great to be in flow state where everything is peachy. But people who have tried to build something know that you will constantly bang your head against different walls that need effort and solving. And you dont know how much effort is required until the task is done.

I am a drummer. One of the most important lessons I learned and passed onto my students is one I learned from Joe Morello (GOAT imo): tension should never be present in your playing. Counterintuitive because if you're playing a fast or difficult part, the natural inclination is to try harder. The correct way to try harder is to practice with intention, not push your body past its limits. The ability will follow.

This is my problem when I try to open a jar with a stuck lid. In the act of gripping the lid well enough to have traction to turn it, I end up squeezing the lid so hard that it deforms and becomes harder to turn.

I wish this was the case but I have found that almost any success in my life took enormous amounts of effort.

However, to some extent I do agree. For example, when learning to play the guitar, it’s important to learn to exert just the right amount of effort to place on the strings. When typing on a keyboard, I have a habit of pressing way too hard and I realized this lead to a lot of hand pain.

So saying zero effort might be an incorrect title - maybe saying “using just the right amount of effort” would be more accurate

The best example of this for me is playing drums. It's a very physical thing to do and extremely easy to get caught up in the fun of it. You find yourself playing very hard with a lot of tension everywhere. The problem is that it's very difficult to do this for long periods and if you want to play a series of fast notes accurately, it's counterproductive. So, I'm constantly telling myself to play as soft and loose as possible until one day it hopefully becomes automatic.

This is certainly relevant to aikido, and in particular the somewhat nebulous concept of "aiki". Unnecessary tension in a technique creates a reaction in your partner which tends to block things. Skilled practitioners make things look effortless, and use much less tension - they are more relaxed. It's a fascinating study - and lots of fun. Very different sport - but check Shane Benzies and his books and videos on running and technique - how technique makes a huge difference, with less effort.

Serendipitous, I recently wrote about my controversial interpretation of wu wei, which, in modern terms, is erasing effort by leveraging habits and other automatisms. If you have to be conscious about it, you’re doing it wrong. Nice to see Lao Tzu quoted in a post about (non-)effort.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46267098

“Governing [ourselves] is like cooking small fish.” — Lao Tzu, paraphrased.

> These scripts team up with one of the core principles of Alexander Technique: Faulty Sensory Appreciation

Someone mentioned to me that we have a disease of hard-working. The article correctly identifies it as a sensory problem.

I would go further inquiring why this happens. The motivation that propels you towards too much effort is incorrect. You should question your ambitions, the need and your value system that values your effort vs returns and justifies the effort.

Grip seems like a bad example since in most cases gripping something a little bit stronger will make your grip a little more robust to an unexpected perturbance (e.g. you stumble, or someone bumps into you). Unless you have good data on how common such perturbances are, how changes in grip strength affect robustness in the face of perturbance, and what drop rate is acceptable, how would you know whether you're gripping things too strongly?

If you have experienced in racing, motocycle racing in particular, you can relate this message very well. Trying too hard can really reduce performance or laptime, similar to run the marathon. You have to feel very relax to get better result. And, feeling relax in death-pace or very risky situation like racing is something you need to work on overtime. The appropriate amount of effort is the key.

> "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." — Lao Tzu

Ok, while I’m into this sort of thing, and there are other way of saying this that I agree with- this is inaccurate. Some animals, insects, etc. do sometime hurry. Scare any animal or insect and it will hurry.

This attitude is antithetical to corporate America, at least in software. Try going into a scrum and saying nature does not hurry and you'll get laughed out of the room. Your boss expects you to be filling your time with work, even when there's nothing to work on.

This reminds me of Anxiety Culture. There is some wisdom buried in this ancient website (and some malarky).

https://www.anxietyculture.com/

"Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything I thought it could be."

- Office Space (1999)

The article reminds me of the similarly ridiculous take in Effortless Mastery. These authors are selling your own hopium to you. The appropriate amount of effort is as much as possible - just don’t do it in such a dumb awkward way.

that's true for some folks out there. But, ultimately its about these 3 questions: - what you are? - what you want to be? - when you want to be there? I think if you don't have an answer to the last question, you should be fine with 0 efforts.

I mostly agree, but I also find that deliberately using more effort than "necessary," sometimes helps me to "feel" the relationship with my task more effectively.

You see this with musicians, all the time. They "throw" themselves into their performance; even when sitting in a studio, in sweats. It helps them to "feel" their output.

Artists also frequently have idiosyncrasies that seem to be impediments to performance.

I can't remember which bestselling author it was, but I heard of an author that writes everything by hand, on legal pads. They pay someone to transcribe it to electronic form.

Rhiannon Giddens is known for performing barefoot. I suspect that she even did that, at her White House gig[0] (note the very long dress).

I'm pretty sure that it helps her to "feel" her music.

[0] https://www.pbs.org/video/-performance-rhiannon-giddens-perf...

“The Strength of Ease” — a mantra I tell myself

I've seen a lot of references to this "Alexander Technique"[1] lately but no indication that it's anything other than the latest trendy pseudoscience that you can conveniently use to explain just about anything. (There seems to be a fair amount of overlap between it and what I can only describe as "rationalists who think they invented meditation".) Does anyone know why it's so popular now or who's behind the push?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_technique

What a bunch of nonsense. Top performers aren’t top performers because they’re relaxed and don’t put in extra effort. They’re relaxed and don’t put in extra effort because they’re top performers. This is like saying that the way to run fast is to put a gold medal around your neck, since that’s what the fastest runners do. It’s a complete reversal of cause and effect.

Wu wei.

As alluded to in another comment, this post kind of makes a lot more sense if you've read The Inner Game of Tennis.

It kind of glosses over competence of practice, but the TL;DR is once you've built up some competence with a skill, staying in a constant state of effortful tension won't give you better results. Entering flow state requires getting into "unconscious competence" effectively.

...which is effectively a reframe of how The Inner Game of Tennis says it: to practice your still with non-judgement while you do it.