Think About Why It’s Illegal To Hire A Hit Man.

Wtf!!!!!!!

happy "everyone forgets that icarus also flew" monday. i want to throw up !

This question and its answer from The New York Times work advice column is W I L D.

“For all the attention the Berlin conservatory study has received, this part of the top students’ experiences—their sleep patterns, their attention to leisure, their cultivation of deliberate rest as a necessary complement of demanding, deliberate practice—goes unmentioned. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell focuses on the number of hours exceptional performers practice and says nothing about the fact that those students also slept an hour more, on average, than their less-accomplished peers, or that they took naps and long breaks. This is not to say that Gladwell misread Ericsson’s study; he just glossed over that part. And he has lots of company. Everybody speed-reads through the discussion of sleep and leisure and argues about the 10,000 hours. This illustrates a blind spot that scientists, scholars, and almost all of us share: a tendency to focus on focused work, to assume that the road to greater creativity is paved by life hacks, propped up by eccentric habits, or smoothed by Adderall or LSD. Those who research world-class performance focus only on what students do in the gym or track or practice room. Everybody focuses on the most obvious, measurable forms of work and tries to make those more effective and more productive. They don’t ask whether there are other ways to improve performance, and improve your life. This is how we’ve come to believe that world-class performance comes after 10,000 hours of practice. But that’s wrong. It comes after 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, 12,500 hours of deliberate rest, and 30,000 hours of sleep.”

— Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Darwin Was a Slacker and You Should Be Too

“Here’s what I know: if someone’s much better than you at something, they probably try much harder. You probably underestimate how much harder they try. I’m not saying that talent isn’t a meaningful differentiator, because it certainly is, but I think people generally underestimate how effort needs to be poured into talent in order to develop it. So much of getting good at anything is just pure labor: figuring out how to try and then offering up the hours. If you’re doing it wrong you can do it a thousand times and not produce any particularly interesting results. So you have to make sure you’re trying the right way. […] I’m curious about the ugliness of trying, the years and years of wanting and hoping and working. I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by craft. I think it’s because it requires such a sustained tenacity. Like Michelangelo saying that he just chips away at everything that didn’t look like David: a hundred thousand little motions to reveal the underlying beauty. I think a lot of people want to be but they don’t want to do. They want to have written a book, but they don’t want to write the book. They want to be fit, but they don’t want the tedium of working out. They’re ashamed of rejection and they’re ashamed of imperfection. I might want lots of people to subscribe to this Substack, but do I want to workshop a post every day? Donna Tartt once said in an interview that if the writer’s not having fun the reader isn’t either. I think people make the best things when they love the process, when they willingly shoulder the inherent uncertainty and pain that comes with it. It’s almost like a form of prayer: you offer up what you can even though the reward is uncertain. You do it out of love.”

— Ava, effort (via luxe-pauvre)

Works by Jade Merien

This artist on Instagram // Society6

most people make it seem harder than it is. imagine.

My life has been so much better ever since I traded my impostor syndrome to brilliant conman -syndrome. Do I deserve anything in life? Fuck no! Will I grasp it anyway? Fuck yes!

 My art has never been worth shit, but watch me bullshit my way into art school! I am a horrid goblin, but watch me make these people like me! Am I qualified to do this task? Well I sure have the certificates that say that I am! And how did I get those? Who knows! Not me! I am so good at cheating, I don’t have to break a single rule to do it!

 I am brilliant, fast, and absolutely drunk with power!