Law 30 - MAKE YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENT SEEM EFFORTLESS

Extracts from the 48 laws of power by Robert Greene

Judgement:

Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and all the clever tricks, must be concealed. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more. Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work – it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.

“Nature does not reveal it’s tricks, and what imitates nature by appearing effortless approximates nature’s power.”

An example: The great escape artist Harry Houdini; The Impossible Possible

It was not the occult, or any kind of magic, that gave him his powers, but hard work and endless practice, all of which he carefully concealed from the world.

Houdini never left anything to chance – day and night he studied the workings of locks, researched centuries-old sleight-of-hand tricks, pored over books on mechanics, whatever he could use.

Every moment not spent researching, he spent working his body, keeping himself exceptionally limber, and learning how to control his muscles and his breathing.

It was not Houdini’s tools but his practice, work, and research that made his escapes possible.

In the book of the Courtier, published in 1528, Baldassare Castiglione describes the highly elaborate and codified manners of the perfect court citizen. And yet, Castiglione explains, the courtier must execute these gestures with what he calls sprezzatura, the capacity to make the difficult seem easy.

He urges the courtier to “practice in all things a certain nonchalance which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does, seem uncontrived and effortless.

We all admire the achievement of some unusual feat, but if it is accomplished naturally or gracefully, our admiration increases tenfold - “whereas… to labor at what one is doing and… to make bones over it, shows an extreme lack of grace and causes everything, whatever its worth to be discounted.”

The idea of sprezzatura is relevant to all forms of power, for power depends vitally on appearances and the illusions you create. Your public actions are like artworks: They must have visual appeal, must create anticipation, even entertain.

For instance, Houdini will deliberately drag out the time it would take to escape, as a way of heightening the drama, and make the audience squirm. His escapes from death, always graceful and easy, made him look like a superman.

When you reveal the inner workings of your creation, you become just one more mortal among others.

What is understandable is not awe-inspiring – we tell ourselves we could so as well if we had the money and time. Avoid the temptation of showing how clever you are – it is far more clever to conceal the mechanisms of your cleverness.

Talleyrand’s application of this concept to his daily life greatly enhanced the aura of power that surrounded him. He never liked to work too hard, so he made others do the work for him – the spying, the research, the detailed analysis. With all this labor at his disposal, he himself never seemed to strain.

There is another reason for concealing your shortcuts and tricks:

When you let this information out, you give people ideas they can use against you. You lose the advantages of keeping silent.

We tend to want the world to know what we have done – we want our vanity gratified by having our hard work and cleverness applauded, and we may even want sympathy for the hours it has taken to reach our point of artistry.

Learn to control this propensity to blab, for its effect is often the opposite of what you expected.

Remember: The more mystery surrounds your actions, the more awesome your power seems. You appear to be the only one who can do what you do – and the appearance of having an exclusive gift is immensely powerful.

As a person of power, you must research and practice endlessly before appearing in public, onstage or anywhere else. Never expose the sweat and labor behind your poise. Some think such exposure will demonstrate their diligence and honesty, but it actually just makes them look weaker – as if anyone who practiced and worked at it could do what they had done, or as if they weren’t really up to the job.

Keep your effort and your tricks to yourself and you seem to have the grace and ease of god. One never sees the source of god’s power revealed; one only sees its effects.

Finally, because you achieve your accomplishments with grace and ease, people believe that you could always do more if you tried harder. This elicits not only admiration but a touch of fear. Your powers are untapped - no one can fathom their limits.

Reversal:

The secrecy with which you surround your actions must seem light-hearted in spirit. A zeal to conceal your work creates an unpleasant, almost paranoiac impression: you are taking the game too seriously. Houdini was careful to make the concealment of his tricks seem a game, all part of the show.

Never show your work until is it is finished, but if you put too much effort into keeping it under wraps, you will be like the painter Pontormo, who spent the last years of his life hiding his frescoes from the public eye and only succeeded in driving himself mad.

Always keep your sense of humor about yourself.

There are also times when revealing the inner workings of your projects can prove worthwhile. It all depends on your audience’s taste. And on the times in which you operate. P. T. Barnum recognized that his public wanted to feel involved in his shows, and that understanding his tricks delighted them, partly, perhaps, because implicitly debunking people who kept their sources of power hidden from the masses appealed to the democratic spirit.

The public also appreciated the showman’s humor and honesty.

If the partial disclosure of tricks and techniques is carefully planned, rather than the result of an uncontrollable need to blab, it is the ultimate in cleverness.

It gives the audience the illusion of being superior and involved, even while much of what you do remains concealed from them.