I'm fascinated with the amount of effort and mastery required to making certain skills or performances look effortless.

Whenever I find myself wishing I could do that "cool thing," too I remind myself that it's almost never "god-given talent" but rather "thousands upon thousands of hours spent in solitary practice to make it look effortless.

Let's nerd out with a few quick examples:

Feats of Beautiful Strength

Director James Gunn has been an absolute delight to follow on Threads.

Gunn is the writer/director of all the Guardians of the Galaxy films, and was recently given the keys to all film adaptations in the DC Comic Universe (Batman, Superman, etc.).

Gunn has been active on Threads for the past few months, answering questions from fans and industry folks throughout the day, dishing out fun words of wisdom, and sharing how he thinks through the creative process, collaboration, and the work of making art.

I particularly enjoyed this story about Cirque du Soleil:

Here's an artist at the top of his craft, seeing another artist at the top of his craft, thinking, "Wow, that looks beautiful and effortless, is it fun?"

Only to discover the performer is usually feeling absolute terror the whole time, hard at working to make his craft look beautiful and effortless.

Standup Comedy

Let's stay with performers, moving from physical gymnastics to mental gymnastics.

Comedian Mike Birgibilia on Scott Galloway's podcast discussed the effort required to craft his stage performances:

In other words, comedians don't tell a joke because it's funny.

They tell that joke until they find a way to make it funny.

Each attempt is slightly tweaked until it reaches its final form. And then it gets told "effortlessly" on a Netflix special.

Dance and Music

I'm currently reading Tom Lake, by Anne Patchett (national treasure), and this conversation between two characters jumped out:

The best performers and creators have honed their craft so expertly that they can make an unbelievably difficult skill look effortless and fun.

Thousands upon thousands of hours of boring practice, grinding, iterating, and improving.

Similarly, a professional musician once told me:

By the time he's performing his music in front of stadiums, he's played each song thousands upon thousands of times. That's a level of practice and dedication to improvement that very very few people are willing to endure to reach that level of success.

It's never what you see. It's all of the work behind the scenes.

Brevity is a Sign of Effort

Weirdly, this concept of effortless mastery also applies to writing, as Blaise Pascal quipped in the 17th century:

Whenever a really funny Thread or meme, hear an amazing joke, or see an effortless performance...

I'm only witnessing the polished final form of something that had been iterated on and improved over the previous decade(s).

That's sort of the magic trick of it.

-Steve

PS: Do you have any other examples of stories like this? I want more! Hit reply and share! I read every reply.

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