Mastery

But in the end, mastery often involves working and working and showing little improvement, perhaps with a few moments of flow pulling you along, then making a little progress, and then working and working on that new, slightly higher plateau again. It's grueling, to be sure. But that's not the problem; that's the solution. 

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Effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it. It would be an impoverished existence if you were not willing to value things and commit yourself to working toward them.

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Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.

The Peter Principle

Dr. Lawrence Peter is famous for proposing that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." In other words, Jen you do a great job, you get promoted. And that process repeats itself until finally you end up in a job you can't handle. 

I'd like to paraphrase the Peter Principle. I think what actually happens is that "in every organization everyone rises to the level at which they become paralyzed with fear."

Showmanship

In our most arrogant moments, the sin of pride--or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation--takes over our personalities and shuts us off from those around us. We become dull to others when all we seek to do is assert how well things are going for us, just as friendship has a chance to grow only when we dare to share what we are afraid of and regret. The rest is merely showmanship. The Mass encourages this sloughing off of pride. The flaws whose exposure we so dread, the indiscretions we know we would be mocked for, the secrets that keep our conversations with our so-called friends superficial and inert--all of these emerge as simply part of human condition. We have no reason left to dissemble or lie in a building dedicated to honouring the terror and weakness of a man who was nothing like the usual heroes of antiquity, nothing like the fierce soldiers of Rome's army or the plutocrats of its Senate, and yet who was nevertheless worthy of being crowned the highest of men, the king of kings.

Sunk Cost

Economists explain this behavior using a concept known as the "sunk cost fallacy": when estimating the value of a future investment, we have trouble ignoring what we've already invested in the last. Sunk costs are part of the story, but new research shows that other factors matter more. To figure out why and when escalation of commitment happens, researchers at Michigan State University analyzed 166 different studies. Sunk costs do have a small effect--decision makers are biased in favor of their previous investments--but three other factors are more powerful. One is anticipated regret: will I be sorry that I didn't give this another chance? The second is project completion: if I keep investing, I can finish the project. But the single most powerful factor is ego threat: if I don't keep investing, I'll look and feel like a fool. In response to ego threat, people invest more, hoping to turn the project into a success so that they can prove to others--and themselves--that they were right all along.

How To Be Lucky

Be generous. 

I don't use that word lightly. Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It's like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune. 

Whenever I feel I'm working in a groove it's invariably because I feel I am being the benefactor in the situation rather than the beneficiary. I am sharing my art with others, lending my craft to theirs, interest-free without no IOU. I want the dancers to look great, so I try to give them great steps. In return, they live up to the potential I see in them. Then I am the one who feels lucky. In the luck equation, who is the winner here? 

Someone once asked me why the superstar dancers of the ballet world don't make very good choreographers. The quick answer is that few of them have the facility to teach effectively since a lot of what they do has come so easily to them. But I think the bigger issue is generosity. Stars become stars because they have a gift for pulling the world into them; they draw people's attention through their beauty, talent, charisma and wiles. As a result I don't think they're generally willing to project their own artistic hopes and desires onto other people. They are used to having their own assets supported. This isn't evil selfishness or egotism it's simply a part of their creative DNA, the way they are. 

To be a great choreographer (or teacher), you have to invest everything you have in your dancers. You have to be so devoted to them and to the finished creation that your dancers become your heroes. It takes courage to be generous like that, to believe that the better the dancers look (or the actors in your film, or the singer of your song), the better the scene will play and the more satisfying the work itself will be. Without that generosity, you'll always hold something back. The finished work shows it, and your audience knows it.  

It took me years to appreciate this. When I was younger (read: more limber, athletic, and strong) I used to do this awful thing to myself: Whatever dance I was working on, I would literally put myself in the center of the piece, even though I knew full well that I wasn't going to get to perform it. For a few years there, when I was in my forties and could still move well, I would get really pissy when the inevitable moment arrived and I would have to recuse myself from the piece and hand it over to one of my dancers. Of course, injecting myself into the piece was one of the ways I identified what the piece was about. (Every director does this-- tries each role on herself.) But each advancing year taught me a little more about generosity. Nearing my sixth decade, I could no longer rationally harbor illusions that I was the only one who could perform my work. In fact, I couldn't. If I could, it would not have been challenging enough for my extraordinary (read: younger) dancers. Age forced me to learn how to give everything to my dancers. That's not an easy lesson to learn, but I'm grateful for it. (Still pissed off, but grateful.) 

I cannot overstate how much a generous spirit contributes to good luck. Look at the luckiest people around you, the ones you envy, the ones who seem to have destiny falling habitually into their laps. What are they doing that singles them out? It isn't dumb luck if it happens repeatedly. If they're anything like the fortunate people I know, they're prepared, they're always working at their craft, they're alert, they involve their friends in their work, and they tend to make others feel lucky to be round them. 

Stupid

5. What is the dumbest idea? Thinking I could have it all. 

6. What made it stupid? Its built-in futility, given how I work. To lead a creative life, you have to sacrifice. "Sacrifice" and "Having it all" do not go together. I set out to have a family, have a career, be a dancer, and support myself all at once, and it was overwhelming. I had to learn the hard way that you can't have it all, you have to make some sacrifices, and there's no way you're going to fulfill all the roles you imagine. We thought, as women in the sixties and seventies, that we could change everything and remake all the rules. Some things changed, and some things pushed back. What makes it stupid is that I set up a way of working that was in direct conflict with my personal ambition. Something had to give.  

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31. Which of your answers would you most like to change? Number six. Down deep, I still want to have it all.

- Twyla Tharp

Bridges

If we are to find our way across troubled waters, we are better served by the company who gave built bridges, who have moved beyond despair and inertia.