A System For The Transfer of Energy
In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, George Saunders defines “story” as “a system for the transfer of energy.” When a creative work—a short story, a movie, a song, a book—moves us, that is the transfer of energy from the creator to the consumer. Among the ways to up the energy levels stored in a work, Saunders suggests “stretching—trying things that are at the limit of our abilities, that may cause mistakes.” He analogizes it to exercising. For example, if you repeatedly run the same distance at the same pace, your body adapts and becomes more efficient, causing the energy output per run to plateau then decline over time. To increase the energy levels, one must stretch—by running faster, farther, or both.
Stretching, trying things at the limit of our abilities—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
Let’s Find Out
Throughout his twenties and early thirties, Jason Segel acted in Comedies and Rom-coms: Freaks and Geeks, Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, This Is 40, How I Met Your Mother, and I Love You, Man among others. Then when Segel was 33, director James Ponsoldt wanted him for the part of David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour. “It was such a drama,” Segel said. “It was nothing I had ever done before.” It would force him to stretch: “Up until that point,” he explained, “I either wrote the thing, so I knew I could do it, or I was sent stuff that was adjacent to things I had written, so I knew how to do it.” So when he was offered the role in The End of the Tour—“I read it, and I was not sure that I would be capable of doing it…And I was so scared.” As he leaned toward coming up with an excuse to turn down the role, Segel thought to himself, “I was like, ‘who do you wanna be? The guy who finds out, or the guy who, for the rest of their life, sits at the dinner party saying like, Well, if I had played David Foster Wallace, I would’ve…’ You know what I mean? We all know that guy—If I had directed “The Revenant,” the bear would’ve been much faster. And I was like, ‘Let’s find out. Let’s find out if you can do this.’” The movie premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where it received “rave” and “glowing” reviews. In particular, “Mr. Segel’s performance—empathetic, nuanced, whip smart—left the packed theater breathless.” The energy transfer between Segel’s performance and audiences continued—a few months after Sundance, the movie was released in theaters worldwide, and Segel went on to win multiple Best Actor and Best Male Lead awards. Reflecting on how almost didn’t find out if he could do it, Segel said, “The End of the Tour is the movie that changed my career and my approach to acting.”
My Intention Was To Push The Limits In Every Way
Around this time of year in 2014, Mark Manson was feeling down—his fiancée was stuck in Brazil due to visa issues, and so, he was alone for the holidays. “I was basically just moping around,” Mark said. “And when I get mopey, I get very snarky and bitingly sarcastic.” In this mood, Mark looked through a document in which he collected writing ideas. When he saw an article title idea, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck,” it resonated with how he was feeling, and he thought to himself, “You know what? I am going to write the most offensive, profane thing I can possibly imagine, but I’m going to pair it with the best advice I can possibly imagine.” Mark started writing. “My intention,” he told me, “was to push the limits in every way—absurdity, tone, style and everything.” After he finished writing the piece, it was such a stretch, so unlike anything he’d ever written, that he was reluctant to publish it, pretty sure that a piece unlike all of his others wouldn’t resonate with his readers. He sent the draft to his research assistant and said, “Warning…I went nuts. I don’t know if I want to post it.” After reading the draft, his research assistant replied, “You can fire me if you want, I’m posting this fucking thing.” When I asked his research assistant if it was typical for Mark to ask for input on whether to publish something, he said, “No, he’d typically send me a draft when it was ready to post. I don’t think he’d ever sent me anything before to see if it was worth publishing. I can’t think of any other time he’s done that.” Mark’s research assistant published the article. The response was immediate and overwhelming. The article was read by millions of people within a few days of being published, leading Mark to expand its concepts and themes into a book that became a powerful system for the transfer of energy: to date, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck has sold over 20 million copies worldwide.
Hey…This Is Not That Bad
Of course, stretching, trying things that are at the limit of our abilities, doesn’t always result in awards and bestsellers and success and positive transfers of energy. You might fail, you might be criticized, you might get rejected, laughed at, and booed. Which…is not that bad. After graduating from a performing arts school in 1991, for instance, Dave Chappelle moved to NYC to pursue a comedy career. During his first performance at the Apollo Theater’s “amateur night,” he was booed off stage. “And that was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said, “because before that time, I had never bombed, let alone got booed off stage. Bombing was horrifying—nobody wants to bomb. Nobody. So that night was liberating because I failed so far beyond my wildest nightmares of failing. And it was like, ‘Hey…this is not that bad.’ And after that, I was fearless.” And he still is. Chappelle isn’t afraid to bomb—even now. A little while back, the comedians Mike Birbiglia and Hasan Minhaj were discussing how Chappelle became one of the greatest of all time. “The most successful people fail the most,” Birbiglia said. “Chappelle is on stage, bombing, so much. I’ve watched him at The Comedy Cellar a lot, and for hours, he’s up there with no laughs.” He’s always stretching, always trying things at the limit of his abilities.
“No Way. Too Scary.”
In the documentary Free Solo, there’s a scene where a team of neuroscientists perform an fMRI and conclude that Alex Honnold’s brain abnormally responds to fear. “I find that irritating,” Honnold later said. “I’ve spent 25 years conditioning myself to work in extreme conditions, so of course my brain is different—just as the brain of a monk who has spent years meditating or a taxi driver who has memorized all the streets of a city would be different.” Before Honnold climbed El Capitan—a 3,000-ft rock wall in Yosemite—without a rope, for example, “I’d drive into Yosemite, look at the wall, and think, ‘No way. Too scary.’” So, “to gradually expand my comfort zone,” he said, he climbed El Cap hundreds of times with a rope, acclimating to the climb and causing the fear response to plateau then decline over time. Through this progressive stretching, Honnold conditioned himself, and on June 3, 2017, he became the first person to climb El Cap without a rope.
Moving Toward Higher Levels
Einstein once said: “No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception.” Actually, this is a misquote of what he actually said: “Let the people know that a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.” In any case, stretching to new planes of thinking, acting, running, writing, performing, joke-making or climbing, is essential if you are to move toward higher levels.