Aesthetics of effortlessness.

Thoughts / thread.

Growth mindset is a heartwarming meme, because it feeds on feelings of hope and aww. However, it is not reflected in what people actually value, as in: what gives social status.

What is cool: “I woke up like that”, “you make it look easy”.

What is uncool: “gold star for effort”.

These are the aesthetics of effortlessness.

As a consequence, the following shadow rule operates: if you had to work for it, you don’t deserve it.

How’s that for a mindfuck?

This drives nuts everyone who wants to incentivise effort (managers, teachers, parents). They try to propagate different values by setting up artificial rewards, “gold stars”.

Gold stars are the opposite of status symbol. They are cringe symbols. Why?

1. They’re paternalistic. They visibly mark the recipient as being subject to evaluation and approval.
2. They suggest the recipient is desperate to gain this approval.

In short, only a hopelessly naive or socially desperate person is earnestly proud of their gold star.

But in the absence of gold stars and similar incentives, effort is still uncool.

Here’s Suzie, losing cool points by betraying that she has to work to understand a lesson.

In a momentum-driven world, we are all looking for ways to shorten the time required to gain escape velocity.

https://twitter.com/fvathynevgl/status/1239558557948928000?s=21 https://twitter.com/fvathynevgl/status/1239558557948928000

Effortlessness means: no grind, immediate escape velocity.

Amateurs love the mystique of effortlessness. It allows them to put the effortlessly-perfect person on a pedestal as someone special, destined to win.

It gives them hope that escape from the grind is possible.

The same promise is held out by productivity systems. It’s why people obsess about life hacking.

It’s also why being organised and prepared is uncool, “neurotic”. Because we know people obsess about these things as an anxiety relief.

People being publicly open about their anxieties and struggles dispel the illusion of being *better than you*.

Really high status people make themselves approachable this way. Everyone else playing the game hovers too close to the bottom line to afford a dip.

So they don’t.

My growth mindset, your strong work ethic, their tryharding.

Effortlessness failure mode 1: impostor syndrome.

If you take other people’s projected effortlessness at face value, and compare your actual levels of effort to the projected levels, you end up feeling inferior.

Solution: grok that others are always low key lying.

Effortlessness failure mode 2: self-sabotage.

If you suffer from low self-esteem, you might earnestly attempt to project effortlessness at *yourself* by procrastinating and then succeeding at your task *just barely*.

Look, ma, no effort!

Final thought: people who bought into a person’s superiority can get *really fucking angry* when the mask comes off.

Example 1: makeup and face tune. Men’s reactions to women’s makeup. Advice to “take them for a swimming date”, etc.

Example 2: tech job interviews.

The really competitive ones don’t reward thinking at the whiteboard. You have to come up with a solution fast (and it better be optimal or close). Effortlessly, like.

People train solving problems that took decades to solve in 30 minutes.

End thread