I woke up this morning and decided that I didn’t feel like running because of one reason or another. “Marathon, smarathon!” I thought.
Anyway, I just finished watching a talk with Aimee Mullins, who is a double amputee, and a world-class runner. She talked about everyone who has been involved in the progression towards her goal and how it wasn’t just about her — but a collective achievement between her and her coaches, and her friends and family, etc.
I’ve officially run (not punny) out of excuses.
Edit: It’s “have run” with the past participle not “have run” with the past tense. Thanks, Jessica.
As always, as I am also a master summarizer, here are the good parts:
Leonardo was the kind of person we have come to call a “genius.” But he had trouble focusing for long periods on a single project. After he solved its conceptual problems, Leonardo lost interest until someone forced his hand. Even then, Leonardo often became a perfectionist about details that no one else could see, and the job just didn’t get done.
Leonardo worked on what interested him at the moment, cultivating his energies and insights, even when those activities were not directly related to his current commissions.
Leonardo, it seems, was a hopeless procrastinator. … Leonardo, you see, was “afraid of success,” so he never really gave his best effort. There was no chance of failure that way. Better to “self-sabotage” than to come up short.
Of course, the therapeutic interpretation of Leonardo — and, perhaps, of many of us in academe who emulate his pattern of seemingly nonproductive creativity — has a long history. Leonardo’s reputation spread at exactly the right time for someone to become a symbol of this newly invented moral and psychological disorder: procrastination, a word that sounds just a little too much like what Victorian moralists used to call “self-abuse.”
The rhetoric of anti-procrastination — constructed by imperialists, religious zealots, and industrial capitalists — had become internalized. We no longer need to be told that to procrastinate is wrong. We know we are sinners and are ashamed. What can we do but work harder?
Like the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we live our lives with regret for what we have not done — or have done imperfectly — instead of taking satisfaction with what we have done, …
If Leonardo seemed endlessly distracted by his notebooks and experiments — instead of finishing the details of a painting he had already conceptualized — it was because he understood the fleeting quality of imagination: If you do not get an insight down on paper, and possibly develop it while your excitement lasts, then you are squandering the rarest and most unpredictable of your human capabilities, the very moments when one seems touched by the hand of God.
Some of Leonardo’s entries are short jottings; others are lengthy and elaborate. The notebooks give the impression of a mind always at work, even in the midst of ordinary affairs. He returned to some pages intermittently over many years, revising his thoughts and adding drawings and textual elaborations.
Far from being a distraction — like many of his contemporaries thought — they represent a lifetime of productive brainstorming, a private working out of the ideas on which his more public work depended. To criticize this work is to believe that what we call genius somehow emerges from the mind fully formed — like Athena from the head of Zeus — without considerable advance preparation.
If creative procrastination, selectively applied, prevented Leonardo from finishing a few commissions — of minor importance when one is struggling with the inner workings of the cosmos — then only someone who is a complete captive of the modern cult of productive mediocrity that pervades the workplace, particularly in academe, could fault him for it.
Productive mediocrity requires discipline of an ordinary kind. It is safe and threatens no one. Nothing will be changed by mediocrity; mediocrity is completely predictable. It doesn’t make the powerful and self-satisfied feel insecure. It doesn’t require freedom, because it doesn’t do anything unexpected. Mediocrity is the opposite of what we call “genius.” Mediocrity gets perfectly mundane things done on time. But genius is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. You cannot produce a work of genius according to a schedule or an outline. As Leonardo knew, it happens through random insights resulting from unforeseen combinations. Genius is inherently outside the realm of known disciplines and linear career paths. Mediocrity does exactly what it’s told, like the docile factory workers envisioned by Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Like so many of us in academe, Leonardo was endlessly curious; he did not rely on received wisdom but insisted on going back to the sources, most important nature itself.
Perhaps Leonardo’s greatest discovery was not the perfectibility of man but its opposite: He found that even the most profound thought combined with the most ferocious application cannot accomplish something absolutely true and beautiful.
Leonardo is just one example of an individual whose meaning has been constructed, in part, to combat the vice of procrastination; namely, the natural desire to pursue what one finds most interesting and enjoyable rather than what one finds boring and repellent, simply because one’s life must be at the service of some compelling interest — some established institutional practice — that is never clearly explained, lest it be challenged and rejected.
Academe is full of potential geniuses who have never done a single thing they wanted to do because there were too many things that needed to be done first: the research projects, conference papers, books and articles — not one of them freely chosen: merely means to some practical end, a career rather than a calling. And so we complete research projects that no longer interest us and write books that no one will read; or we teach with indifference, dutifully boring our students, marking our time until retirement, and slowly forgetting why we entered the profession: because something excited us so much that we subordinated every other obligation to follow it.
If there is one conclusion to be drawn from the life of Leonardo, it is that procrastination reveals the things at which we are most gifted — the things we truly want to do. Procrastination is a calling away from something that we do against our desires toward something that we do for pleasure, in that joyful state of self-forgetful inspiration that we call genius.
PS. I am not an genius. Who am I kidding? I think we’re all geniuses.
If you are not a procrastinator (Really?), I’d suggest not reading. Otherwise, here are some really good excuses! Jk.
Being the slacker-extraordinaire, it’s no surprise I’d try and disseminate something titled “How to procrastinate like Leonardo da Vinci.” We’re basically the same person. And of course he’s an Aries too. Believe me yet??
As always, as I am also a master summarizer (Not really), here are the good parts:
Leonardo was the kind of person we have come to call a “genius.” But he had trouble focusing for long periods on a single project. After he solved its conceptual problems, Leonardo lost interest until someone forced his hand. Even then, Leonardo often became a perfectionist about details that no one else could see, and the job just didn’t get done.
Leonardo worked on what interested him at the moment, cultivating his energies and insights, even when those activities were not directly related to his current commissions.
Leonardo, it seems, was a hopeless procrastinator. … Leonardo, you see, was “afraid of success,” so he never really gave his best effort. There was no chance of failure that way. Better to “self-sabotage” than to come up short.
Of course, the therapeutic interpretation of Leonardo — and, perhaps, of many of us in academe who emulate his pattern of seemingly nonproductive creativity — has a long history. Leonardo’s reputation spread at exactly the right time for someone to become a symbol of this newly invented moral and psychological disorder: procrastination, a word that sounds just a little too much like what Victorian moralists used to call “self-abuse.”
The rhetoric of anti-procrastination — constructed by imperialists, religious zealots, and industrial capitalists — had become internalized. We no longer need to be told that to procrastinate is wrong. We know we are sinners and are ashamed. What can we do but work harder?
Like the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we live our lives with regret for what we have not done — or have done imperfectly — instead of taking satisfaction with what we have done, …
If Leonardo seemed endlessly distracted by his notebooks and experiments — instead of finishing the details of a painting he had already conceptualized — it was because he understood the fleeting quality of imagination: If you do not get an insight down on paper, and possibly develop it while your excitement lasts, then you are squandering the rarest and most unpredictable of your human capabilities, the very moments when one seems touched by the hand of God.
Some of Leonardo’s entries are short jottings; others are lengthy and elaborate. The notebooks give the impression of a mind always at work, even in the midst of ordinary affairs. He returned to some pages intermittently over many years, revising his thoughts and adding drawings and textual elaborations.
Far from being a distraction — like many of his contemporaries thought — they represent a lifetime of productive brainstorming, a private working out of the ideas on which his more public work depended. To criticize this work is to believe that what we call genius somehow emerges from the mind fully formed — like Athena from the head of Zeus — without considerable advance preparation.
If creative procrastination, selectively applied, prevented Leonardo from finishing a few commissions — of minor importance when one is struggling with the inner workings of the cosmos — then only someone who is a complete captive of the modern cult of productive mediocrity that pervades the workplace, particularly in academe, could fault him for it.
Productive mediocrity requires discipline of an ordinary kind. It is safe and threatens no one. Nothing will be changed by mediocrity; mediocrity is completely predictable. It doesn’t make the powerful and self-satisfied feel insecure. It doesn’t require freedom, because it doesn’t do anything unexpected. Mediocrity is the opposite of what we call “genius.” Mediocrity gets perfectly mundane things done on time. But genius is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. You cannot produce a work of genius according to a schedule or an outline. As Leonardo knew, it happens through random insights resulting from unforeseen combinations. Genius is inherently outside the realm of known disciplines and linear career paths. Mediocrity does exactly what it’s told, like the docile factory workers envisioned by Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Like so many of us in academe, Leonardo was endlessly curious; he did not rely on received wisdom but insisted on going back to the sources, most important nature itself.
Perhaps Leonardo’s greatest discovery was not the perfectibility of man but its opposite: He found that even the most profound thought combined with the most ferocious application cannot accomplish something absolutely true and beautiful.
Leonardo is just one example of an individual whose meaning has been constructed, in part, to combat the vice of procrastination; namely, the natural desire to pursue what one finds most interesting and enjoyable rather than what one finds boring and repellent, simply because one’s life must be at the service of some compelling interest — some established institutional practice — that is never clearly explained, lest it be challenged and rejected.
Academe is full of potential geniuses who have never done a single thing they wanted to do because there were too many things that needed to be done first: the research projects, conference papers, books and articles — not one of them freely chosen: merely means to some practical end, a career rather than a calling. And so we complete research projects that no longer interest us and write books that no one will read; or we teach with indifference, dutifully boring our students, marking our time until retirement, and slowly forgetting why we entered the profession: because something excited us so much that we subordinated every other obligation to follow it.
If there is one conclusion to be drawn from the life of Leonardo, it is that procrastination reveals the things at which we are most gifted — the things we truly want to do. Procrastination is a calling away from something that we do against our desires toward something that we do for pleasure, in that joyful state of self-forgetful inspiration that we call genius.
PS. I am not an genius. Who am I kidding? I actually think we’re all geniuses.
PPS. A bug I found in Safari 4 for WordPress 2.7.1 users: When editing in the visual mode, the link feature doesn’t work. You have to switch over to html.
Here, in list form because we all know that you, like me, most likely have the attention span of a goldfish. Damn the interwebZ!
This morning:
Came home at 1AM from Belinda’s (She hates driving at the airport, but loves me a little bit more so she picked me up and we hung out ever since)
Surprised that I did not pass out on the wheel, thank goodness… for all 2 of the people on the road at that ungodly hour
I’m actually a really good driver though.
After arriving at 3PM yesterday, I had a 7:30AM flight back
Mom pestered me to wake up at 6AM thinking I’d miss my flight
Doesn’t she know I am a traveling machine? I don’t miss flights.
Uh, hi boyfriend of my mom, sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee. Awkward morning exchange ensues.
While driving, my mom says, “You should find a nice friend, who will help you with your homework.”
Absolutely not.
We got to the airport and while taking my bag out of the backseat, she runs over my foot. (I am okay.)
Seriously, this is my mother.
My mother who makes sure I’m fed and have money, but runs over my foot, unknowingly!
MY FEET ARE SMALL
Nice woman… love her!
Couldn’t find that “Expert” traveler line, went into the “Family/Medicinal Liquids” line. FML.
Landed.
Bianca came and picked me up — she hates the airport too. “Look this makes no sense. The exit is right here but it looks like you’re entering the parking garage and now I’m just driving towards garbage cans.”
My mom calls me to tell me that I looked pretty this time.
That’s sweet, right?
Mom: You looked pretty even though you were wearing ugly clothes.
I’m sitting at LAX and my flight is delayed. Luv ya, Southwest. There are a lot of things I could do right now, like stuff I actually have to do, people watch (Oh, come on!), or take out my computer, open up a Word doc after trying to connect to the Internet – uh, catch on the free wi-fi train, LA – and write something.
Most mornings, I’ll watch a few podcasts while I eat breakfast because the local news is all drivel most of the time, the meteorologists are usually scantily clad, and it’s hard to hold a newspaper and read when I just want to eat my “moons over Miami” (Check it out – my favorite breakfast). One particular morning, after realizing that while I’m not a complete failure, but rather just a quitter, I watched this TED podcast. The Wall Street Journal’s catchy little pop-rock interludes weren’t doing it for me.
Those of you not familiar with TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), it’s an annual conference where speakers give talks on a broad range of topics – their tagline is “Ideas worth spreading.” They’ve made all of their lectures available via their website and (video) podcast.
If you have 20 minutes to spare, I would highly recommend watching this TED talk by Barry Schwartz titled “The real crisis? We stopped being wise.” If not, since I am a master summarize, you can read my thoughts (and learn a little something about me outside of that ridiculous 25 things – my roommate told me she read it and learned nothing, fantastic!). This is assuming you’d rather read my blather than watch that cutie, Barry.
Anyway, Schwartz begins his lecture with a list of a hospital janitor’s duties, all of which are solitary tasks (e.g. Clean this, vacuum that, etc). Actually, he begins – and ends – his lecture with a reference to Obama, but I think this subverts from his overall message and is kind of polarizing. While his references were valid, I think Schwartz’ would have been more credible if he didn’t use Obama as his beacon of virtue throughout if he wants to appeal to a greater audience. That said, I’d proceed with the video under the assumption that he is non-partisan and secular because it’s very inspiring otherwise.
Back to the lecture – Using stories of several hospital janitors ignoring their duties simply because it was “the right thing to do.” Those solitary tasks that were a part of their original list of duties were disregarded to accommodate the people they were interacting with. Schwartz illustrates their wisdom in knowing when to ignore the rules and when to improvise.
“A wise person knows:
1. When and how to make an exception to every rule
2. When and how to improvise
3. How to use these moral skills in the pursuit of the right aims
4. Is made not born”
Schwartz contends that we are unintentionally at war with wisdom when we rely on rules and incentives. However, to preserve order and prevent crises, we reach for rules and incentives. Specifically, he notes, now, during the economic crisis – the overwhelming reaction is for more regulation and fixing incentives. But, neither are enough in the long run because “moral skill is chipped away by an overreliance on rules that deprives us of the opportunity to improvise and learn from our improvisations and moral will is undermined by incessant appeal to incentives that destroy our desire to do the right thing.”
Especially now, given my complete hopelessness in the education system, I completely agree with his second example of overbearing rules destroying the will to learn and be creative. Schwartz used an example from the Chicago School District: a script for a teacher with exactly what to teach, when to teach it, and how to teach it. In this over-scripting, we strip the ability for the individual teachers to gauge and assess their individual classroom’s environments, its students, and to proceed appropriately and in the way that’s most engaging and efficient. That script exemplifies what Schwartz says about rules.
It is “insurance against disaster, it prevents disasters, but ensures, in its place, mediocrity.” I agree with him in that, of course, rules are essential, without them nothing would get done, or they would get done at a significantly slower pace. (Think free markets and/versus government regulation.) But, too many rules prevent improvising and as a result, using a jazz musician as an example, s/he – there is that annoying ambiguous singular pronoun again – will lose his/her gift or just stop altogether.
By the way, I’m on the airplane now.
Exhibit A: I officially quit trying to learn computer science. A little background: I tried a programming class and the same computer science class last winter and eventually dropped both. Stubbornly and using the whole “it’s not you, it’s me” notion, I tried again this quarter. I’m not trying to say that I could potentially be a C++ genius and this computer science class dwarfed this hidden ability. However, I would’ve gladly taken the class if there weren’t an impending F at the end of the quarter. Btw, you can’t take that class pass/no pass due to departmental regulations. Okay, this will be my last complaint and reference to CS: it was definitely a mix of my apathy for the class and the overly structured nature of the class that led to this complete dispassion of mine.
Anyway, back to Schwartz and incentives. His main points: “There are no incentives that you can devise that are smart enough”. He continues, “any incentive system can be subverted by bad will” – though I think this is true of everything, not just incentives. Excessive reliance on incentives demoralizes professional activity. This is where I’d refer to the video; he shows a few cartoons that illustrate this idea. “When professions are demoralized, people become addicted to incentives.”
What he then suggests is to “re-moralize work” by celebrating moral exemplars. Schwartz retorts, “No 10-year-old goes to law school to do mergers and acquisitions.” Think about Atticus Finch, he says.
He mentions a few people that he considers moral exemplars; refer to the video. The anecdote about the reforestation efforts in Indonesia was particularly interesting because it illustrates such an obvious concept – “Unless the people you’re working with are behind, you will fail” (e.g. See the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, etc.) There is no formula, he says, “different people in different communities organize their life in different ways.”
That said, moral exemplars are not always extraordinary heroes – they’re usually ordinary heroes and that is what we should strive to be. “Any work that you do that involves interaction with people is moral work and any moral work depends upon practical wisdom.” As students, leaders, and teachers, we should all strive to be the ordinary heroes and the moral exemplars. We should always be teaching because someone is always watching.
“The good news is that you don’t need to be brilliant to be wise. The bad news is that without wisdom, brilliance isn’t enough.”
I am slightly mortified by my very plausible F in computer science. I say slightly because I am more amused and quite proud of doing something so profoundly awful. GO BIG OR GO HOME! WOO!
– Mortified again. –
To more important matters: I am curious why/how/who has cultivated this argumentative nature of mine. Sometimes, especially in the usually ineffectual discussions, I’m tempted to take the dissenting minority opinion just to have some sort of fruitful exchange. I wonder if this is how Republicans in college feel… because it’s kind of awesome.
PS. That number is completely random; I haven’t written 8,572 of these *thoughtful* reflections though it’s a very reasonable assumption.
– Update: Still mortified –
I wrote this entry this afternoon. It’s about 12:34am now and I just realized that I somehow missed my CS midterm. FAIL. But not really because I just dropped the class instead. I feel like I just ended an abusive relationship or something. “He hit me because he loves me!”
1. This is absolutely not wholly indicative of me, only because I’m not a master summarizer/storyteller/adeptly self-aware.
2. I don’t really think this survey is as dumb as I pretend to think it is.
3. They’re actually pretty interesting, but I think that’s because my selection of friends is probably at a higher caliber than most. Ha ha.
3.1. (See those who have been tagged.)
4. That said, I think I’ve reached that threshold of being tagged and ultimately having to write one too.
4.1. I not-so-secretly-anymore think it’s really cool to be tagged because I think that means someone wants to know more about me.
5. Does this mean this is a product of my guilt? Kind of. But not really! This is an earnest effort, take it for what it is.
6. I can count to six in six languages: English (Clearly), French (Madame Williams & Weiss), Vietnamese (I CAN), Arabic (Arabic 1, the things you learn), Spanish (I feel like this is tacit knowledge somehow) and Japanese (My best friend growing up, Heather, taught me).
7. Speaking of 6s, I was listening to NPR’s Wait, Wait this morning with John Hodgman who plays the PC in the Apple commercials. That tidbit wasn’t really necessary to preface the next tidbit but, the Apple 1, when it was first released (With 8k RAM, how cute!), was priced at $666.66 so everyone thought Apple was evil. Legitimately so. (Found it: http://tinyurl.com/lnohj)
7.1. TinyURL’s page is ugly compared to others like http://tr.im. AND it’s redirect URL is usually longer. Damn the precedence (Was it the first?) — old habits die hard.
8. How could I be running out of things about myself already??
8.1. What if we have nothing to talk about after this?
8.2. I don’t have unlimited interesting facts about myself…
8.2.1. Omg, I’m finitely interesting!
9. I’m listening to John Coltrane right now, but I kind of want to listen to Dr. Dre’s The Chronic instead.
10. I used to have a kitten that I probably loved more than a lot of things and real people. Her name was Ampersand (Serif Bergamo).
11. Embarrassingly, I think I receive the most texts from my mum.
12. I’m just arbitrarily dividing these right now.
13. My heroes, not inclusive, are my mum, my sister Theresa, Jennifer Zhu AKA probably the 3 most badass women in my life.
14. I’m training for the LA Marathon, but my longest run is only 5m right now.
14.1. I decided to register a couple of months ago when I realized that I can’t play any other sport and c’mon, anyone can run. Right?
14.2. I actually did play volleyball and softball… in middle school.
15. I have a lot to do and manage to waste a lot of time.
15.1. Please don’t pseudo-ask me with the weird inflections in your voice, “[How do] you do so much?!?” I really don’t think so and I don’t know how.
16. I will. never. be. good. at. C++. I’m accepting it now. Moral: Stick to what you’re good at, but try everything once, or in this case twice. Accept that you are not good at everything that involves a computer.
17. I think that these are shortcuts to make you believe you know someone.
18. But I’d rather think of it as a little sampler. I really like samplers.
19. No, I’m not a vegetarian anymore. Just in case, I don’t know.
20. Can’t you just read my blog instead? Twitter even??
21. I love and appreciate a lot of people. You’re probably one of them. I wish I would tell these people (You) that more often. There, now I have.
22. I remember reading something awhile back about picking what you like given people, ideas or data/information. I’ve always picked people and ideas. They always have a lot of data and information. Hence my fascination with social media, the Internet, etc.
23. Does anyone reveal anything bad about themselves here? I mean, let’s keep it real. Probably not. So, no self-depcrecation here. Move along. Wait, let’s explore this thought first. There’s nothing wrong with presenting only the good things. Isn’t that what we all do? Even in real life. No one is going to prance around telling everyone they’re a jerk.
23.1. Even a (very much self-proclaimed) grammar snob like me really hopes the English language will recognize the singular “they.” I mean, really… how awful would that sentence have been if I had written “No one is going to prance around telling everyone he or she is a jerk.”
24. I’ve realized I haven’t revealed so much about myself as an individual, but rather my thoughts, but if my thoughts define me, then technically I have!
24.1. I was just thinking earlier about how everyone is really a reflection of everything/everyone around them, it’s just a matter of filtering out which and whose reflection you want to be made of.
25. If I’ve tagged you (I’ve tagged everyone who’s tagged me), don’t be guilted into filling one out or anything. We’re all “busy.”
