Authentic Efforts

Harry reads a passage from a book by Robert Pirsig that raises questions about what authentic effort looks like — and the traps inherent in its trappings.

• On Quality by Robert Pirsig
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
• Lila by Robert Pirsig
• Traction Heroes Ep. 11: Gall’s Law
• Atomic Habits by James Clear

Episode Transcript

Harry (00:00):
One of my clients many years ago was starting a company

(00:05):
and it was very important tothem they got this beautiful
office.
And then, they had to get thiscustom made table.
Then they had to get thisperfect chair.
And then they had to get thisbrilliant whiteboard.
And then they had to get thisfancy computer and this awesome
screen.
And it was like all of theenergy that they were putting
into the optics around the thingwas not the thing itself.

Narrator (00:34):
You're listening to Traction Heroes.
Digging In to Get Results withHarry Max and Jorge Arango.

Jorge (00:45):
Hey, Harry.
It's good to see you.

Harry (00:47):
Hey, Jorge, it's great to see you as well.
It's always a pleasure.

Jorge (00:51):
Our last conversation that we had, unfortunately had
an audio snag.
And I still got value out oftalking to you, even though we
won't be releasing that one.
But here's a shot at anothertake.

Harry (01:08):
On some level, I'm a little bit pleased that one
didn't manage to launch yet,because when we started our
conversation last time, Irealized that what I really
wanted(was) the reading I'mgonna share today.
And it felt out of order, ineffect.
So, hopefully I didn't rainkarma on the call.

Jorge (01:29):
Feels like I need to knock on wood or something.
But to your point, that initself is a good takeaway here,
which is the ability to look atthe silver lining in things.

Harry (01:43):
Yeah.

Jorge (01:45):
Roll with the punches.
And sometimes...

well, not sometimes (01:48):
mess ups will happen.
And the question is, how do yourespond to the situation?

Harry (01:58):
Yeah.
And positive reappraisal is yourfriend.

Jorge (02:02):
That's a good way of putting it.
We were talking before westarted recording that you have
picked a different reading.
I'm very curious.

Harry (02:11):
Yeah.
So this is interesting, I got anemail from, I think you probably
got the same email today fromDave Gray, it was perhaps a
LinkedIn post on the creativeprocess.
And interestingly, that's whatmy reading is on.
And I'm so excited to sharethis.
I've been a big fan of thisauthor for a long time.

(02:35):
I'll wait till the end to sharethe author's name with you.
And I'm very curious to see yourreaction.
It's a little bit long, but Ithink it's really well worth it.
So, if I may, let me just dig inand then we'll go from there.
Does that work?

Jorge (02:48):
Yeah, let's do it.

Harry (02:49):
All right, so...
"I want to talk about thecreative process.
My medium is books, or to put itprecisely, a book.
Other people work in differentmedia, but I think my creative
process is not so different fromthe one that you may go through.
And if so, then perhaps somethings I say may have value for

(03:13):
you.
A lot won't.
No two people are the same, inthe same situation, or have the
same set of problems, but inanother sense, and this is a
contradiction, everybody's inthe same situation and has
identical problems.
"Regarding the creative process,I wanna talk about two books.
The first is the book I neverwrote, and the second is the

(03:35):
book I wrote.
I'd like to contrast how both ofthese, the book and the
non-book, were arrived at, andby comparing the two, try to get
an idea of what was going on,and draw some morals and maybe
find something useful in thatprocess.
"The first book never did get atitle, and of course, it never

(03:57):
got written, but it was going tobe a great book.
My wife and I were just married.
We lived in Reno, Nevada, and wewere dealers in a gambling
casino at the time.
I dealt the Keno and this wasthe Nevada Club, and she dealt
the roulette and we were gonnasave money.
We lived in a cheap trailer andwe saved all the cash we could.

(04:20):
We figured the only way to beatthese casinos is to work for
them and take as much as you canget and get out of there and
never spend a cent if you canpossibly avoid it, and then go
someplace where costs are very,very cheap in this case, Mexico
and then sit down there andwrite the perfect book.
:So we worked for eight months.

(04:41):
This was in 1953 or 54, and atthe end we had$3,400 saved,
which in the fifties was a hugesum of money, and we hitchhiked
a Bobby and McGee fashion allthe way through Nevada and into
Southern California, acrossArizona, and down into Mexico.
And then, at the Mexican border,got a third class bus and went

(05:02):
down through Mexico City throughVeracruz way down into the
jungles of Mexico and into atiny little village in a town
called Acayucan." I can'tpronounce it.
Oh my God, sorry for that.
"In Acayucan, we got paper and Ibought a Parker 51 pen and

(05:25):
prepared to write the greatbook.
"At first, I found a good roomwith proper temperature and
proper exposure.
It was nice temperatures downthere.
It was fall getting into winter.
I got a comfortable chair andsat down.
After about fifteen minutes,after all this preparation, I

(05:46):
said,'Maybe I should walk alittle.' I walked a little
around town and met variouspeople and talked for a while
and said,'That's veryinteresting.
Now I'll go back and write.'"AndI went back and spent maybe an
hour or two, and was reallybeginning to get frustrated and
not willing to admit that maybewhat I had come down all the way

(06:07):
here for wasn't going to happen.
So I procrastinated on this andother things for about a week,
and at the end of the week, Istill hadn't written anything.
I began to become graduallyaware that something was very
deeply wrong.
That everything I'd set up,everything I'd come down here
for, wasn't right at all.

(06:28):
It was the wrong situation.
I was doing it badly.
"And then, at the time, an ideacame along,"Well, I'll build a
boat." And this struck me as oneof the most brilliant ideas I
ever had, of course, about thattime because that got me out of
writing.
I tore into this little boatwith great tenacity.

(06:49):
I found that you could get atrained carpenter for$12 a week
and you could get pure mahoganyat twelve cents a board foot.
We were very close to a rivertown, and I spent the next six
months working on a boat.
And that never got built either,although I still have some
lumber in my garage and somedaymaybe I'll get back to it.

(07:10):
"So that was the first book.
It's a process which I think isimportant to go through at one
time or another.
The great effort which producesnothing.
The great stymie."

Jorge (07:21):
Wow, the great stymie.
I love it.
I was nodding in recognitioninternally here.
I think we've all gone throughthis, right?
When you first started readingit, I thought that it was going
to be Rick Rubin, but then, whenyou set it in the fifties in a

(07:45):
casino and then Mexico, I waslike, no, it's impossible.
What book is this and who is itby?

Harry (07:50):
This particular book is called On Quality
into Excellence.
It's the unpublished andselected writings of Robert
Pirsig who wrote Zen and the Artof Motorcycle Maintenance.
And it is a fabulous short andvery interesting book on so much

(08:11):
of what he covered in Zen andthe Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance, and then followedup in his book Lila.
But it's much more accessible insome ways.
The philosophy, the metaphysics,the ideas that he had in this
short little book, becausethey're letters that he's
writing to explain things abouthis thoughts to other people

(08:36):
rather than having to go throughthe fairly complicated
narratives that he spun throughZen and the Art Motorcycle
Maintenance and then where hedelivered on the philosophy in
more depth in Lila.
But Like so many things in mylife, this seems to be so deeply

(09:00):
relevant right now, because thisis all about doing it wrong and
then finding your way to doingit right.
And I just loved the process bywhich he attempted to set up the
whole structure and basicallyrealized that all of his effort

(09:22):
in doing it right wasn't aboutbuilding a practice to actually
get something done.

Jorge (09:28):
I've read Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance a couple
of times.
I read it in college first andthen a few years ago, actually.
But I haven't read Lila and Ihave not read On Quality.
I can totally hear Pirsig'svoice now, in that little
fragment you just read.
But the reason why I said thatthis was so recognizable is that

(09:52):
I think we've all had projectsthat we started by trying to set
the perfect conditions, where wecome at it with the idea that we
have the right idea, and that wejust have to create the
conditions necessary to get theidea out, when in reality, we

(10:14):
don't have the right idea, wehave the idea that we have the
idea.
And those are very differentthings.
And it can be very frustratingto invest all this effort into
building the right shop or, inthis case, moving countries,
just to be in the kind ofperfect writer's shed, only to

(10:39):
realize that you're now staringat this blank piece of paper and
it's staring back at you andtaunting you in a way that makes
progress impossible.
And this kind of avalanche ofthoughts, where it leads me to
is a subject that we talkedabout a few weeks ago, Gall's

(11:00):
law, this notion that you can'tbuild a complex system from
scratch, you have to startsmall.
And I think that is true also ofcreative efforts.
You have to put the pen on thepiece of paper and the pen needs
to start moving and you need tolet go of the idea that the

(11:21):
first thing that comes out isgonna be the perfect thing.
You just have to iterate yourway to something that might be
completely different from whatyou initially thought, but it's
a thing, right?
And it's the thing thatscratches the itch that is
causing you to put all thiseffort into the situation.

Harry (11:42):
Yeah, and it reminded me...
one of the things this remindedme of, which was really
powerful, wasn't so much alesson, but it was an
insight/observation.
One of my clients many years agowas starting a company and it
was very important to them theygot this beautiful office.

(12:02):
And then, they had to get thiscustom made table.
Then they had to get thisperfect chair.
And then they had to get thisbrilliant whiteboard.
And then they had to get thisfancy computer and this awesome
screen.
And it was like all of theenergy that they were putting
into the optics around the thingwas not the thing itself.

(12:24):
And they would've been, I think,better off, better served, by
thinking through what was itabout what they were fixated on
that was important and why werethey trying to send this kind of
message.
Maybe that turns out it would'vebeen valuable.

(12:46):
For example, I have anotherclient who has a fairly
successful business and they'vespent a lot of money on the
optics of their business.
But that's because, in thatcase, the second client hosts
meetings at their office andthey've managed to get business
because people have stepped intheir office and said,"Obviously

(13:11):
your attention to detail is spoton and you clearly have the
aesthetic that we're looking forand..." But, in contrast to that
first business, where somebodythought they needed to do it
right, they needed to have itall set up perfectly, and yet,
they didn't spend the time tothink through what really
mattered underneath gettingclear about was their idea big

(13:38):
enough to be a product, was thatproduct big enough to support a
business?
Was that business big enough toactually be sustainable?
That wasn't where they werespending their time and energy.
And all of us have fallenthrough this trap I know I have
of,"I can't do the writingunless I have the perfect
computer." Now, what's true is Irealize that my writing process

(14:05):
involves scissors and tape andpen and paper, it has nothing to
do with how nice my Mac is.
And I was just blown away byreading Pirsig's account of him
trying to write the perfect bookand just utterly flat based
failing because that wasn't thebook that was gonna get written

(14:27):
and not in that particular way.

Jorge (14:29):
I have a friend who, when we were younger, he would do
things like, he would say I'mgonna get into surfing, right?
And then he would go off and buya surfboard and he would go off
and buy the right pair of trunksand he would buy the special
kind of sunscreen to put on hisface and all this stuff.
And, he would show up at thebeach with all the right gear,

(14:50):
right?
And we know people like that.
It's like, I'm learning to dosomething, I'm a complete
neophyte, but I'm gonna go offand I'm gonna buy the best
camera, the best lenses, or whathave you.
And I think that it's easy to...
I've always thought it was like,how silly, and in fact, one of
my favorite rock bands is, Rush.

(15:13):
They have this song calledLimelight.
And the chorus of the song, Ithink, is apropos conversation.
It says, Living in thelimelight, the universal dream,
for those who wish to seem.
Those who wish to be must putaside the alienation, get on
with the fascination, the realrelation, the underlying theme.

(15:35):
Which is to say, there arepeople who are all into,"I wanna
seem like a rock star.
I want to seem like a surfer.
I want to..." And I used to havea very negative take on that if
for no other reason that I couldrecognize the tendency in myself

(15:55):
and despised it because italways ended up to me sinking a
lot of money into something thatwent nowhere, and then I felt
guilty about it.
But now, I can kinda see thelogic.
And for me, the turning pointcame in reading the book, Atomic
Habits.

Harry (16:14):
Oh yeah.

Jorge (16:15):
By James Clear.
And this is an idea that I don'tthink is original to Clear, but
it's the notion that if youreally want to change your life
so that you do the things thatyou want to be doing as opposed
to the things that you say youwant to be doing, one of the
most powerful things that youcan do is you can change your
identity.

Harry (16:36):
Yeah.

Jorge (16:37):
You can change your identity so that all of a
sudden, you start thinking ofyourself as a writer, you start
thinking of yourself as asurfer, or as a professional
photographer.
And the way that I see it now isthat this tendency to want to
set up the right conditions, getthe right gear, do all this

(16:58):
stuff, it's an attempt to cajoleyourself into adopting that
identity because of the sunkcost fallacy, right?
It's like,"I've already put somuch into this, I'm putting
myself on the line to actuallybecome the thing that I'm saying
I'm going to become." It's astrategy for basically

(17:18):
committing yourself, right?

Harry (17:21):
Yeah, I think that leaning into the identity thing
is very powerful.
And I agree, I think there's anenormous amount of energy or
power to be gained fromassociating yourself into the
kind of person who is thatthing.
I That's a very internalorientation and I think it's

(17:44):
very different from thinkingthat the tools and the outside
things are gonna bring the powerto you.
Funny, I'm talking on a brandnew microphone today, given our
little audio glitch.
Here I am in Toronto and Irealized I didn't have a travel
microphone, so I made the effortto go to the local music store

(18:06):
and pick up a Shure MV 88 plusso I would have a nice,
melodious tone in speaking withyou.
And I found myself in kind ofthe guitar section looking
around.
I have had this hankering toplay banjo recently.
I don't know why.
I've played guitar for manyyears.
I'm not terribly good.
But, I've been thinking aboutlearning how to play banjo.

(18:29):
But one thing I've learned aboutguitar and one thing I've
learned about both playingguitar and learning guitar and
having guitars and being aroundpeople that are learning guitar
and being around people thathave played guitar is, when
you're learning a newinstrument, you don't want to
get a crappy one, becausethey're demotivating and they're

(18:50):
harder to play.
So you want to get one that'sgood enough that it's gonna pull
you in to the thing rather thanpush you away from the thing.
And so, I found myself, walkingalong the wall of banjos in the
guitar store and not evenknowing what questions to ask,
but realizing thatfundamentally, what I wanna do

(19:12):
is I want to get an instrumentthat's good enough for a
beginner and not so expensivethat it will be prohibitive, but
something that will pull me in.
And, I think there's like asubtle difference, maybe not so
subtle, between getting theright stuff, and then being a

(19:32):
poser, or being a poser versusassociating into the identity of
being that thing.
And yeah, the Pirsig writingreally captivated me because
there are other parts of thatstory in that book that talk

(19:55):
about how Zen and the Art ofMotorcycle Maintenance came to
be as a book that was failingfor many years until he had a
breakthrough.
And that breakthrough wasn'tabout where he was sitting and
whether he was building a boator whether he had the nice
office.
It was about the materialitself.

Jorge (20:15):
One of the themes in that book is authenticity, right?
And it's the authenticity thatcomes from really knowing the
workings of the thing that youare involved with at a very
granular level.
And to your point, if you gowith the cheapest thing that
will allow you to get started,your experience might be

(20:35):
degraded to the point that youdon't stick with it.
What I thought of when you weresaying that, It's funny you
should use this example of thebanjo, there's so many stories
of like rock guitar players whostarted with a crappy guitar.
Like, their parents bought themthe cheapest guitar or whatever,
and they just cranked through itand learned even though they had

(20:56):
this crappy instrument orwhatever.
Which would be a kind of counterargument to that idea.
But then I thought, Harry and Iare in stages of our lives where
we don't have the time that ayounger person would have to
fall crazy passionately intoplaying a crappy instrument to

(21:17):
the point where you're willingto overlook its flaws.
And if you have the cash toinvest in something that is
going to allow you to getstarted faster and more
effectively, then by all means,do it.
But don't do it just because youwant to say that you have the
fanciest, most capable, or whathave you, when you haven't even

(21:40):
taken the first photograph orplayed the first lick.
It's counterproductive.
And I would imagine that it'scounterproductive
psychologically as well, in thatyou're adding undue pressure
somehow.

Harry (21:54):
I would say, for anybody that's ever either wanted to
read Zen and the Art ofMotorcycle maintenance, and for
some reason hasn't, or forsomebody that got partway
through it and gave up becauseit was so difficult, or for
somebody that read it but didn'treally internalize so much of
what Pirsig had to offer, partlybecause what he was promising he

(22:15):
delivered in his follow-on book,I think this book, On Quality is
probably the most accessible wayto get into his head and
understand what it means to beauthentic and to what it means
to experience a quality life.

(22:44):
It's really short and it'sreally lucid in a way that I
felt...
zen and the Art of MotorcycleMaintenance was one of the first
really complicated books I read,because I was dyslexic.
So I didn't read a lot when Iwas younger, but when I got a
hold of Zen and the Art ofMotorcycle Maintenance, I
couldn't put it down.

(23:06):
And then, when I read Lila yearslater, I realized,"Oh, so much
of what he was talking about isnow coming into shape in this
follow-on book, which wasnowhere near as good a story.
But now this new work reallyputs a nice, bright light on the

(23:27):
ideas, about what it means toexperience dynamic life and how
that fuels a creative experienceand life.

Jorge (23:44):
Okay, so I'm adding both Lila and On Quality to my
reading list.
But, I'm gonna put you on thespot here.
If you were given a billboardwhere you could, articulate like
the big idea in On Quality, soas to draw someone into that
book, what would you say it is?

Harry (24:04):
I would say that it is an exceptionally accessible look at
the difference between living adynamic creative life versus
living a static experience inthe rear view mirror.

Jorge (24:26):
It sounds like a perfect book for someone who is
struggling to gain traction.
So I think it fits perfectlywith our theme.
Thank you for thatrecommendation, Harry.

Harry (24:36):
Yeah.
I really appreciate theconversation.

Narrator (24:42):
Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes
with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
Check out the show notes attractionheroes.com and if you
enjoyed the show, please leaveus a rating in Apple's podcasts
app.
Thanks.