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just do it?


Stashed in: Zen, Intuition, Think!, Meditate, Awesome, Remind Me, Nike!, Plan!

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I thought it was Yoda who said this?

As the great choreographer George Balanchine would say to his dancers, “Don’t think, dear; just do.”

I use a trick with co-workers when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s.

An interesting thing happens. Everyone unanimously agrees that we can’t possibly go to McDonald’s, and better lunch suggestions emerge. Magic!

It’s as if we’ve broken the ice with the worst possible idea, and now that the discussion has started, people suddenly get very creative. I call it the McDonald’s Theory: people are inspired to come up with good ideas to ward off bad ones.

I think it's true. We used to call this a "strawman proposal" to get the ball rolling.

By the way, I agree with the conclusion of Barbara Montero's New York Times article:

In its “just-do-it” advertising campaign, Nike presumably used the phrase to mean something like, “stop procrastinating, get off your posterior and get the job done.” Interpreted as such, I’m in favor of “just-do-it.” However, when interpreted as “experts perform best when not thinking about what they are doing,” the idea of just-do-it is a myth.

If so, the enormous popularity of books that tell us how to achieve mastery in chess, cinch a business deal or become a better parent with neither effort nor thought nor attention may turn on our preference for “magical” efficiency over honest toil. They reach the status of best sellers for the same reason as do diet books that advocate eating as much as you want as long as you abstain from some arbitrary category of food: not because they work, but because they are easy to follow.

As for Balanchine’s claim that his dancers shouldn’t think, I asked Violette Verdy about this. Verdy was a principal dancer with New York City Ballet for 18 years under Balanchine’s direction. But she brushed off the question. “Oh, that,” she replied. “He only said that when a dancer was stuck; like an elevator between floors.”

Jim Gaffigan's comments on McDonald's are hilarious: 

such a good special

@Mark--that video is funny. I don't eat out a lot, and not many vegetarians frequent McDonald's (just saying), but in high school I worked there...it's true. That video gave me the most excellent laugh to start my day. Thanks. 

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