It takes effort – focused, conscious effort – to achieve anything in life. But, just applying effort isn’t enough. Relentless effort can become a mechanical process that mires you in a rut.
To breakthrough to a new level of creativity and productivity requires effortlessness as much as effort.
Effortlessness frees you from your habitual focus. Being effortless opens you up to receive information, inspiration, and direction from sources outside the boundaries of your effort-full focus. Whether those sources are other people, books, the unconscious, the spirit – or all of the above!! – it is effortlessness that allows you to take them in. But, effortlessness, by itself won’t generate breakthroughs.
Too much effort and you get tight, rigid, and constricted. Too much effortlessness and you become diffuse, vague, and directionless. It takes both to generate breakthroughs.The place where effort and effortless meet – is the breakthrough zone.
Bill Russell, the legendary basketball great, describes his experience of breakthrough and the paradoxical brilliance that occurs when effort and effortlessness unite:
“At that special level all sorts of odd things happened. The game would be in a white heat of competition, and yet somehow I wouldn’t feel competitive — which is a miracle in itself. The game would move so quickly that every fake, cut and pass would be surprising, and yet nothing could surprise me.”
Questions for Reflection & Action
- Where do you want to create a breakthrough in your work or life?
- How much effort are you applying?
- How much effortlessness?
- What does this tell you?
- How can you adjust the balance of effort/effortless so that they merge into breakthrough?
Sign up for the RSS Feed
Subscribe by Email
2 responses so far ↓
1 John Langlois // May 8, 2009 at 10:04 pm
At my work, effort is a function of the clarity of our project scope. If we don’t know where we are going, we tend to shotgun for answers (features/function) to improve our offerings. That expends a ton of effort while we go nowhere fast.
Bill Russell and his team knew exactly where they were going as they traveled down the court together toward the opponents basket.
Obstacles would appear. They would adjust with zippy passes and keep pressure and momentum moving toward that goal. You could argue that it was effortless because the entire team was behaving as a single unit with a single mission.
2 Eric // May 8, 2009 at 10:19 pm
“Behaving as a single unit” – there’s a lot there. It included having a single mission and much more.
Like really paying attention to each other and the other team. Paying such deep attention that they were able to, as you say “adjust” in such a zippy manner that it felt “effortless”.
They also spent a lot of time – before the game – practicing their skills. Individually and collectively. And practice is the place where they hone the balance between effort and effortless.
At work there is virtually no time to “practice”. What would practice look like?
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
Eric
Leave a Comment