Attention is a wave on which we must learn to surf.” The most powerful and thriving industry today is the one that has our attention at the heart of it. If I want to achieve my goals then I need to ride the wave not get drowned in it when it “takes off” it’s like a well-oiled machine that functions to perfection. It’s like when you see someone run one hundred meters in ten seconds. You see the miracle of sentences mounting up, and your mind functions almost outside itself. You become a spectator of yourself. When that happens, I write really easily, and I just can’t stop. And when it works it’s fantastic. They’re really blessed moments. Yes, sometimes, you feel just like the queen of words. It’s extraordinary, it’s paradise. When you believe in what you’re writing it’s an incredible pleasure. You feel like queen of all the earth.

I love airport books, the kind you buy just before you get on a plane, that you read while looking out the window. Books you read out of the corner of your eye, but which imperceptibly change your way of seeing and behaving. Not quite philosophy, not quite journalism, nor personal development; more like a journalism of ideas, along the lines of Malcolm Gladwell. He gets interested in an idea, investigates it to see how it has changed people’s lives, and then writes an article or a book on it. If I had to write an airport book, I’d write one about ease. If you thought the book’s title was confusing then the chapter on “Hit the target without aiming” will throw you off. But there is a difference between trying too hard to hit a target and preparing well enough, physically and mentally, to hitIn any case, putting in your 10,000 hours in your given area absolutely does not guarantee that you will reach expert level. You need both the innate “hardware” (the “cables,” the computer), which comes from nature, and the acquired “software,” which comes from training. To achieve greatness there is no magic number of hours that will allow you to substitute work for being gifted. You need both: the gift and hard work. The gift without the work will go uncultivated, the work without the gift will be sterile. In both cases, it’s a waste. It’s a pity not to train if you’re gifted, but training when you have no gift can be harmful. You may incur needless harm to your physique and to your ego, and tenacity or denial can turn into blindness and useless obstinacy. I rejected the suffering that comes from pursuing a path to which one is not suited. Effort against the grain is exhausting. It’s a sign of courage and of abnegation, but above all it’s a sign of self-deprivation. A negative virtue is not without value, but in the end someone who doesn’t like what they do will never go as far as someone who enjoys it. The former will do everything on sufferance; the latter will do it with joy, including suffering if necessary. A characteristic of a good sledge dog is that he enjoys pulling a weight for hundreds of kilometers. You don’t have to push him to do it. Eric Morris, a specialist in these matters, explains that to train sledge dogs to go very long distances, as in the Iditarod, known among enthusiasts as the “last great race on Earth” (over 1,500 kilometers through the cold, long nights of Alaska), there’s no point in using food as a reward. Negative reinforcement, a training technique that consists not in giving a reward but in taking away a punishment, doesn’t work either. “To go that distance, it’s like a bird dog sniffing down a pheasant . . . it has to be the one thing in their life that brings them the greatest amount of pleasure. They have to have the innate desire to pull [the sledge] . . . and you will find varying degrees of that in different dogs.” For pianist Hélène Grimaud, who is as famous for her conservation work with wolves as for the beauty of her playing, the artist at the keyboard is in a state of “visitation.” They “vibrate” with the intuition of a presence, their “thought suddenly receives a kind of illumination, and in turns moves the body accordingly.” Here the vocabulary is no longer that of the sports field; it’s both religious and supernatural.

Noah is lost in the deliciousness of the memory too, and his conclusion is the same as Zidane’s: there just aren’t any words; “those moments really are rare.” To be alive is to be part of the narrative of experience, to be engaged with the world. We are always caught up in the action. So we don’t have to begin, we just have to continue. No need for big decisions. To explain what he meant, Alain took the example he knew best—writing. He quoted Stendhal, who, by his own admission, wasted ten years of his life waiting for inspiration: it is a skill necessary for any profession, and a lot of time is wasted in trying to delete and start again. Crossing out is no way to avoid future crossings-out—quite the contrary—for you can get into the habit of writing any old thing, telling yourself you can change it later. The draft spoils the finished copy. Try the other method; save your errors.Understanding can't be focused. Distraction can make the work easier, it builds momentum. Distraction helps you to not think about what you are doing, so you are content with doing it. There are two ways to clean a burnt pan: taking considerable time and effort to scrub it, or to simply let it soak and return to it later. The first is based on effort, and the second on ease. Postponing action and letting things look after themselves is a win-win. When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Hyper specialization can cause a sort of blindness to the broader picture of what is, based on the view we have of the world and how we operate within it. Don't think about solutions, think about the problem as if the problem were a person, let it speak for itself. Do not confuse preparation with practice. Excessive practice makes you stale. We’ve always been told to think before we speak. But thinking too much and trying to get the right words to describe our thoughts often leaves us paralysed. When I read Alain’s example – “I discover what I want to say when I open my mouth”, I was overjoyed. That is me written all over it In the realm of love, what could be less seductive than someone who's trying to seduce you? Seduction is the art of succeeding without trying, and that's a lesson the French have mastered.

Enumeration - An overview. A naming of parts. A panorama. Regularly widen your gaze so that you do not miss the big picture, the grand scheme. Keep a macro and micro view all at once. Make sure that everything is included.

The French Art of Not Trying Too Hard

Title: The French art of not trying too hard / Ollivier Pourriol ; translated from the French by Helen Stevenson. Other titles: Facile. English