Is there anything that you can do better without even trying?
Asked by
cheebdragon (
20506
)
April 26th, 2013
from iPhone
They say practice makes perfect, but recently I’ve realized that the more I try to do something, the worse it ends up. For example, I bought a big cabinet for $12 at the thrift store to go in my bedroom. Since it was so cheap, I decided to make it awesome and spraypaint it rainbow with black zebra print over it (sounds stupid, but it looks pretty cool). When I first started painting I tried to be super careful with letting everything dry and covering each area so the spray paint wouldn’t get on the other colors, and I tried to carefully place the stencil each time so it wouldn’t smear black everywhere, doing this made it a 2 day project, and it was a huge disaster that resulted in spraypainted grass and mostly a big mess. So I painted it white and started the process again, by this time I was kind of sick of doing it but I couldn’t leave it in the front yard too long so I said fuck it and painted all the pieces in one shot with only a 5min wait between rainbow and black for it to semi dry, didnt really care about where I placed the stencil and just kind of winged it, finished in 45 min and it turned out awesome.
Since then I have noticed that the less effort I put into doing something, the better it ends up being, and the harder I try the worse it gets.
Does anyone else have this issue?
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16 Answers
I find that if I concentrate or “try too hard” things completely fall apart. For example, when we have a few minutes, my kids and I will shoot hoops in the driveway. When I first pick up the basketball in early spring, I will just take some shots and they will go right in. But then something in my brain kicks in and I decide that need to improve or alter something, so I will find myself “trying”, while I progressively get worse throughout the summer. By September, I can’t get a single shot in.
I think some things are done best if you leave your mind out of it. Don’t even tell it what you’re about to do.
Yeah, and the more I look for something the less likely I am to find it, or the more I try to remember something, I just can’t do it, but then a few hours or days later when I’m not thinking about it, it will just pop in my head where I last placed an item or exactly what I was trying to remember.
Yes. Playing pool (billiards).
When I instinctively let the shot go without analysis, I can get some amazing, tricky-looking things to land exactly where they should.
Amazing myself and starting to try planning… well, it’s one miss after another.
It’s probably for the best that my son wasnt born a girl, my house would look like the epicenter of a gay pride parade…..rainbows, neons, glitter, and tiaras everywhere.
I have that issue with sex. But not often enough to record the data and make a study that I could write up or anything.
That was me in high school and college. I studied and got worse grades than when I just winged it.
In a drawing class, I could draw perspective quite efficiently. Taught to do it using numbers and angles, I couldn’t get it right. My eye was more correct than my using a formula.
I’m the king of patience and I seen to have unlimited perseverance.
Just about anything creative works better for me if I don’t over-think it or try too hard. I get my best results when I let loose in the beginning, and only focus on perfecting it at the end of the process – whether I’m writing or painting.
Your project came out really good!
Video games in general, with some exceptions.
If I play modern warfare and try to get a 25 kill streak, I will get killed off after every other kill or so, if I don’t think about it, and just let my fingers do the work while I chat to my friends, that is when I will get a 25 kill streak. The same applies to many other games, with some exceptions, such as tetris, a game that works much better the more I think and try.
Definitely. When playing piano. And juggling.
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