Shaped Effort …

I know about effort. And the ‘faces’ of effort can vary; there is physical effort, mental effort, emotional effort …even then these different kinds of effort can be further’ sliced’ … sustained physical effort (aerobic) or short burst of physical effort (anaerobic). Essentially, effort is about ‘directing our resources’ toward a specific task.

The thing is, resources are limited/finite. Successful people (or animals) are always making sure that the reward for our effort, is worth it. 

Consider a trout who swims right across the stream, fighting the current, to eat a tiny insect off the surface - the calories gained through that kind of effort would be less than the calories required to undertake the effort. The trout that makes that kind of decision, is doomed to die. Efficiency is how survival is done - in the wild. Super-efficiency is thriving is done in life.

In the words of Deadpool - “Maximum Effort’. Maximum effort needs to be shaped and directed toward the right task. Even then, there will often come a point of ‘diminishing returns’. In BJJ for example, we might choose to put in 20 hours of work on an obscure part of our game and we will definitely see a big improvement - but, at what cost? Could say, 15 hours of that effort have been directed at some other aspects of our game and might we have seen a better overall improvement, had we done that? 

My view is that we should invest time/effort/money into something, to the point where we get the ‘lions share’ of the gain or improvement and then cut over to another task. The concept of diminishing returns on given effort is something to consider when we make invest and focus our attention.

As always - effort is praiseworthy - but shaped-effort is sublime.