Effortless Action Is The Most Stupid Idea Ever

Effortlessness, or effortless action, is an occasional reward for consistent effort. It cannot be the starting point or the baseline of your path. Anyone who is telling you otherwise is your enemy.

One problem with addressing this idea is that it has zero grounding in either real-life examples or in the study of human nature, yet it is disturbingly popular. Because of this, it cannot simply be dismissed, which would be the proper response. It needs to be treated with some level of respect because it has managed to spread like a virus.

“When you pursue something that is truly aligned with your nature, action becomes effortless. You don’t need motivation, willpower, or discipline.” - a random online guru, receiving 120K (one hundred and twenty thousand) likes

Nicely phrased, I’ll admit. This would definitely make for a good scooter sticker for a guy who’s living in Bali and joining all the “spiritual” communities to get laid.

This is just one example of just how popular the idea of “stop forcing, let things happen, don’t try hard, everything should be effortless” is.

Just like we have hustle culture driving people straight to burnout, we have the bastardized version of Eastern Spirituality driving people, especially creatives, to getting zero work done.

But maybe I’m delusional. Maybe the incredibly profound quote above is simply proof that pretty much all of the greatest artists and thinkers were living lives in absolute misalignment with their true nature.

“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.” — Michelangelo

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” — George Orwell

“Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.” — James Baldwin

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people” — Thomas Mann

“The discipline of suffering, of great suffering — do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far?” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” — Pablo Picasso

“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.” — Chuck Close

“There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest (inspiration) does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.” ― Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

I could go on and on and on with quotes, but hopefully you get the idea. The history of human creative accomplishments is the history of struggle, persistence, and endurance.

Moments of effortless action are occasional rewards for those who stick to their craft long enough and don’t get discouraged by how exhausting the journey can be.

It’s either that or Orwell and Tchaikovsky completely missed the point of their lives while the wu wei instagram guru can teach you how to live better than them.

If we have a functioning brain, we’ll acknowledge there’s something fishy about how popular the idea of effortless action is. We’re inclined to ask why it became so popular.

There are two main motivations for accepting and spreading this idea. In both cases, I’ll repeat, the person spreading this idea is your enemy and the enemy of human potential as a whole.

First, this idea is spread by those who want to make themselves feel better about their inability to put in consistent effort. They are philosophizing and spiritualizing their failure to do what needs to be done. They are constructing a narrative that this wasn’t “their thing” because, if it was, they would’ve been able to do it effortlessly.

The second case are the people who have recognized the viral potential of this idea and are using it to gain attention online, regardless of whether they believe in it or not. If it’s not obvious, “effortless action” has such high potential for virality precisely because so many people want someone to validate their lack of effort. This is noticed in the rise of online spiritual gurus whose education consists of watching 3 Alan Watts videos on YouTube and reading one 60-page book on Eastern Spirituality written by someone who’s watched 5 Alan Watts videos.

The reality is that effortlessness is real, but it is always earned. Before there can be effortless action, there must be sustained, strenuous effort.

What people see is a master performing with ease or a masterpiece that is too beautiful to be associated with any form of tension.

What people don’t see are years of practice, thousands of hours of struggle, and countless moments of wanting to quit but deciding not to.

The problem is not that people don’t see this while enjoying a performance or a piece of art. That’s natural. The problem is that people don’t want to see this when considering their ambitions and what it will take to realize them.

The latest example of this collective, voluntary delusion is the case of Alysa Liu. The charismatic figure skater became everyone’s favorite athlete earlier this year after winning the gold medal in the Winter Olympics. And for a good reason. She’s authentic, incredible at her craft, and you can see she’s enjoying it. But the world tried, and perhaps succeeded, to make her a poster girl for “success doesn’t require struggle.”

The internet was flooded by videos and images displaying just how much Liu enjoys figure skating, as if that somehow proved that no effort preceded the enjoyment.

You know which one of her interviews didn’t go viral? The one where she says,

I love struggling, actually. It makes me feel alive. (60 Minutes on CBS news)

Alysa Liu isn’t a proof that, once you find your passion, you’ll be able to excel at it effortlessly. She’s yet another example that even the most free-spirited masters of their craft who reject the hustle culture most passionately still embrace the struggle as an integral part of the journey.

I’m not a gold-medal winner in anything, I haven’t won the Nobel Prize, or created a masterpiece that’s being admired for hundreds and thousands of years.

But I’ve been writing online for over 6 years, and multiple millions of people have read my writing so far. So maybe I have enough credibility to end this with a personal statement.

There are moments where you feel like a vehicle through which an idea is expressed, moments where effort really ceases to exist as a concept. But those are moments, flashes on an otherwise long, long journey.

Those divine, transcendental moments come from having the courage to embrace daily effort. On the other hand, the idea of effortless action is a cowardly attempt to escape the hard work. And, as Emerson said,

“God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.” (Self-Reliance)

P.S. If you want to learn how to take more consistent effortful action toward your goals, sign up for my free live workshop where I’ll be sharing everything that has helped me on my 6-year writing journey. Click here to register.