Dancing
I know this quote by Mark Twain challenges us to be our authentic selves regardless of anything.
Yet, it has drawn my attention continuously like a festering sore.
Why do I have to dance like no one is watching when I can learn to dance even with the blistering gaze of the whole world?
What is the true purpose of this mantra if it teaches me to pretend to ignore the world rather than acknowledge it and move on?
The first step perhaps, is to dance. Dance awkwardly, maybe.
Adam Grant has an assessment on his website that lets you discover the character skill to unleash your potential.
He asks a series of random questions to determine who you are—including some Taylor Swift lyrics, I promise— but the result did not surprise me.
The result showed that I should work on being an ‘imperfectionist’. That is not a huge blow.
However, I am learning to look at things differently by asking, ‘how can I be more imperfect?’
Perfectionists have a desire to be impeccable. As a result, they get these three things wrong.
They obsess over details that don’t matter
They avoid difficult tasks that may lead to failure
They beat themselves up for making mistakes
What strikes me about Adam’s insistence on being imperfect is that the world around me seems to revolve around perfection.
It feels like something that we pursue endlessly, right from ramming through the innocent walls of childhood to the caustic dome of social media.
From watching people brandish their shiny titles and positions on their profiles even for seemingly unimportant things to learning the popular weakness for interviews as ‘being a perfectionist’, I have realised that these things may stem from the pursuit of perfection.
Maybe the reason I can’t dance like no one is watching is because I don’t have Poco Lee’s legs.
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
—Leonard Cohen
Discipline
Why does the word discipline remind me of torture?
On a large scale, it is not meant to be torturous.
Otherwise, it becomes the opposite of what Adam Grant meant when he said that you must choose deliberate play over gamification.
It is not just because research has shown that people with the most discipline use the least amount of it.
There has to be a form of deliberate play. This is what Brandon Payne did for Steph Curry.
Brandon started training Curry with a basic principle ‘There is no boring in our workout’.
Then, he went ahead to create a menu of deliberate play activities.
He made practice easier to help Curry rely less on just discipline. The rest is history.
This is not what Cal Newport seems to emphasise in his book, ‘Deep work’.
Deep Work feels like a burden or maybe because there is something about Cal that makes me imagine him wearing a black turtleneck and gold-rimmed nerdy glasses that he adjusts frequently.
I imagine him vividly plonked on an office chair typing furiously at his keyboard, not smiling.
But here is the deal about choosing Deliberate play over Gamification—when you gamify things, it is a gimmick.
You want to add a dopamine rush to a task to distract you from being bored. This makes a lot of sense.
But what gamification can't do is make you like a task or routine you hate—like when I tried learning German on Duolingo.
With Deliberate play, you redesign the task to be fun.
Many people tell you to just do what you have to do but they don’t tell you that the monotony may suck the life out of it if you don’t make it fun.
Therefore, after dancing awkwardly, the next thing is to have fun while dancing awkwardly.
There is a concept Sam Schillace, the Deputy CTO of Microsoft highlights in an article about letting yourself work without judgment.
He expands on this by referring to an actual experiment where two groups were asked to make pots.
One group was told to make as many as possible. The other group was told to make a single pot as well as possible.
The team that made the best pot was the one that practiced a bunch. Make many pots.
Dance. Dance awkwardly. Have fun while dancing awkwardly. Keep dancing.
1:19 am
You see, It is not a full moon tonight but the softness of the light in this room has formed a vignette that is drawing me to the centre.
It cannot be that I am delusional this time because all I see is a stage. I clamber out of my bed to walk to this stage that only I can see and it feels like I am tottering between two sides —fear and faith.
I do not see anyone yet but I can feel their eyes—some warm and others cold but both searing into my soul.
I stand, visibly shaken and I close my eyes. Then, I open them because I need everyone to watch me.
There is no need to dance like no one is watching. I stand there and take every glare in, and I let out a smile even as my knees wobble.
This is the sign that I need. This is the freedom that my heart yearns for. A sad longing.