The first thing to "get" about effortlessness is that there's no relationship between effort and value.
This is difficult for most of us, because we've been taught all our lives that the relationship not only exists, but is crucial.
"You can't expect to _________ [you fill in the blanks] without making an effort."
"Judy deserves extra credit for making such an effort."
"Steve works so hard that he's sure to get ahead."
Of course we've also been told to "work smarter, not harder." But working smarter requires effort, too. Now we have to think more!
Then there's the issue of fairness. How is it fair for some people be rewarded for doing something easily, when others struggle and struggle with the same task? I remember the guilt I felt in elementary school when I learned things quickly and easily, while most of my classmates had to work hard.
Later, as a young wife and mother in 1960, I remember the controversy among housewives surrounding this issue. The Ladies Home Journal published an article about a woman with four school age children who got all her housework done by 9 a.m. Even the major part of the evening meal was prepared that far in advance. So she had the rest of the day free to follow her own interests.
This article created outrage among her colleagues. Housewives wrote in scathing attacks. It was immoral to get everything done so well, with so little effort!
Controversy continued for several years, not just in The Ladies Home Journal but among housewives everywhere. What "counted" more, effort or results? If you spent three hours cooking an elaborate meal, did that count more than spending one hour? If both meals were equally nutritious, thrifty, and tasty?
It's hard to believe that women argued about this. You could attribute it to the Problem Without a Name, a miasma left over from the fifties that afflicted most women. (In case you missed this marvelous period, it was Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique, who clarified "the Problem Without a Name.")
Yet today, most of us still believe in "the work ethic." (There's an interesting website devoted to its dismantling.) Who dares believe that effort isn't virtuous, in its own right?
Back to my first assertion: there is no relationship between effort and value.
Embracing this disconnection between effort and value, it's possible to place all our attention on creating value. Effort doesn't matter one way or the other. And if it turns out that effortless creating makes more value than effortful creating - then "ah!" And "ah!" again!
Luckily, it takes no effort to let go of the idea that effort creates value. Poof! Gone.
7:15:01 PM 
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