Because face it, ‘Show up, work hard’ makes very bad sales copy. In reality, the common, underpinning thread of any achievement worth touting, is the mundaneness of the steps between conception and completion.īut these mundane steps are rarely publicized. If playing an American superhero can be tedious, then what’s to say of working with spreadsheets or writing project reports?īetter learn how to embrace the suck. And there are just a million angles and a million set-ups, and it’s tedious. Chris Evans, who plays Captain America, in the eponymous movie says: With ‘Captain America,’ you might have three lines of dialogue the whole day. Have you ever watched an action movie shoot in real life? I bet you if people were forced to watch the real, unedited process of these movie shoots – YAWN - ‘action films’ as a genre might not exist in Hollywood today. But try you must.īecause, even the most adventurous sounding occupations have mind-numbing, dreary moments. You may not have Edison’s tenacity or obstinance in the face of failure. You’re bound to encounter an element of tedium in everything you do. If you pick a profession or a hobby you ‘enjoy’, you may never need to embrace the suck, because every moment is going to be just Oh. If that’s not embracing the suck, then I don’t know what is. In view of this immense amount of thought and labor, my sympathy got the better of my judgment, and I said: 'Isn't it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done you haven't been able to get any results?' Edison turned on me like a flash, and with a smile replied: 'Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won't work.' I then learned that he had thus made over nine thousand experiments in trying to devise this new type of storage battery, but had not produced a single thing that promised to solve the question. He was seated at this bench testing, figuring, and planning. Mallory’s recollection of his visit to Edison at the latter’s laboratory: I found him at a bench about three feet wide and twelve to fifteen feet long, on which there were hundreds of little test cells that had been made up by his corps of chemists and experimenters. Edison had been at work on this idea, day and night, for over five months. Mallory, describes Edison’s work on a nickel-iron-storage battery idea. The book describes Edison as a man with ‘unruffled patience’. Project Gutenberg’s e-book publication, Edison, His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, provides great insight into the mind of a remarkable man. To answer this question, I draw inspiration from a man born in the 19 th century, America’s greatest inventor – Thomas Edison. Is there light at the end of this tunnel? Or are we stuck with this grim prognosis? Especially, when we set ourselves the expectation to have ‘the time of our lives’ - every moment - in our current pursuits. Like little kids chasing after shiny toys, it doesn’t take a lot to distract our digital-loving selves into dropping everything to chase after the first ping we hear. Not surprisingly, embrace the suck becomes ever-more-important in a world obsessed with shiny-object-syndrome. I believe this is largely driven by one factor - the almost insatiable need for a society that seeks instant gratification and is easily distracted. Like ‘N Sync’s (the band) revival act, the value of perseverance seems to be making a strong comeback into self-help literature now. Typically, the ‘wokeness’ of the advice tends to be social-environment and culture-driven. Like most things, even life lessons wax and wane in popularity over time. You've managed to stay above the fray! Why e mbrace the suck is climbing the charts now On a separate note, if you’ve never heard the term before, then congratulations on your good judgment. Let’s face it, if it doesn’t sound sexy, it doesn’t have a chance of being heard today. It is simply perseverance masquerading in a social-share-friendly form to attract an urban-dictionary-loving audience. Let me be clear, Embrace the suck isn’t new advice. Of course, if it’s good advice for soldiers operating in life-threatening situations, it’s bound to be great advice for the rest of us too. In Aussie-speak ‘Don’t be a whingy-moany’. Translation: When life gets sucky as it often does, bear it well. ‘Embrace the suck’ is a military expression to stay the course when things seem pointless or get monotonous or unpleasant. Especially in a society obsessed with instant gratification and consumed by digital distractions. In my opinion, the expression ‘Embrace the suck’ deserves one. There are few life lessons worth making a bumper sticker for.
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