Win Great

The following essay is adapted from the introduction to "Best American Essays 2014," which will be published this week.

It is a curious fact that the word essayist showed up in English before it existed in French. We said it first, for some reason, by not just years but a couple of centuries. France could invent the modern essay, but the notion that someone might seize on the production of these fugitive-seeming pieces as a defining mode was too far-fetched to bear naming. Rabelais had written Pantagruel, after all, and people hadn’t gone around calling themselves Pantagruelists (in fact they had, starting with Rabelais himself, but the word meant someone filled with nonjudgmental joie de vivre). Had a Bordelais born with the name Michel Eyquem titled his books Essais in the 1580s? Fine—Montaigne was Montaigne, a mountain in more than name. One didn’t presume to perpetuate the role. France will cherish his example, but the influence it exerts there is partly one of intimidation. In France the essay constricts after Montaigne. It turns into something less intimate, or at least less confiding, becoming Descartes’s meditations and Pascal’s thoughts. It’s said that even a century and a half after Montaigne’s death, when the marquis d’Argenson subtitled a book with that word, Essays, he was shouted down for impertinence. Not a context in which many people would find themselves tempted to self-identify as “essayists.” When the French do finally start using the word, in the early nineteenth century, it’s solely in reference to English writers who’ve taken up the banner, and more specifically to those who write for magazines and newspapers. “The authors of periodical essays,” wrote a French critic in 1834, “or as they’re commonly known, essayists, represent in English letters a class every bit as distinct as the Novellieri in Italy.” A curiosity, then: the essay is French, but essayists are English. What can it mean?

Consider the appearance of the word in English—which is to say the appearance of the word—in the wintertime of late 1609 or early 1610, and most likely January 1610. A comedy is under way before the court of King James I of England, at the Palace of Whitehall in London, or maybe at St. James’s Palace, where the prince resides, we’re not sure. The theaters have been closed for plague, but there must be diversion for the Christmas season. Ben Jonson has written a new piece, Epicœne, or The Silent Woman, for his favored company, the Children of the Whitefriars, boy actors with “unbroken voices,” several of whom have been “pressed”—essentially kidnapped (sometimes literally off the street, while walking home from school)—into service for the theater. For most of them it’s an honor to number among the Children of the King’s Revels. They enjoy special privileges.

January of 1610: James is forty-three. The biblical translation he has sponsored is all but done. John Donne stands there in his late thirties with a pointed beard, holding a copy of his first published book, Pseudo-Martyr. He wants to give it to James, hoping in part to flatter him into forgiving past wildnesses. “Of my boldness in this address,” he writes, “I most humbly beseech your Majesty to admit this excuse, that, having observed how much your Majesty has vouchsafed to descend to a conversation with your subjects by way of your books, I also conceived an ambition of ascending to your presence by the same way.” Galileo squints at Jupiter through a telescope he’s made and finds moons (he can see them so faintly they look like “little stars”) that evidently obey no gravity but Jupiter’s own, suggesting that not all celestial bodies circle the earth, a triumph for proponents of the still-controversial Copernican theory of heliocentrism, but one that raised an important modification to it as well, for Copernicus had placed the sun at the center of the world, whereas Galileo was sensing that there might be no center, not one so easily discerned. James receives a dispatch about it from his Venetian ambassador. “I send herewith unto His Majesty the strangest piece of news,” it reads, “that he has ever yet received from any part of the world,” for a “mathematical professor at Padua” had “overthrown all former astronomy.” What is opening is what the French thinker Pierre Borel will in another half a century call “la pluralité des mondes”—the vista we see with the Hubble. Sir Walter Raleigh sits in the Tower writing his Historie of the World, begging to be sent back to America, saying he’d rather die there “then to perrish” in a cell. We’re at the court of the Virginia Company, which days before has published a pamphlet, a True and Sincere Declaraccion, extolling the virtues of the new colony, that “fruitfull land,” and struggling to quiet horrific accounts that are starting to circulate. Across the Atlantic in Jamestown it’s what they’re calling “this starveing Tyme.” Of roughly five hundred settlers, four hundred and forty die during this winter. Survivors are eating co**ses or disappearing into the forest.

James draws our notice here not for being king—not as shorthand for the period, that is—but because he plays a significant if unmentioned part in the evolution of this slippery term and thing, the essay. We may imagine him as a stuffed robe-and-crown who gives a thumbs-up to the Authorized Version and fades into muffled bedchambers, but James was a serious man of letters. He fashioned himself so and was one, in truth. Not good enough, perhaps, to be remembered apart from who he was, but given who he was, better than he needed to be. He held scholarship in high esteem, while himself indulging certain sketchy ideas, among them the power of demons and witches. In his youth, in Edinburgh and at Stirling Castle, he’d been at the center of a loose-knit, ho******ic band of erudite court poets, dedicated to formal verse and the refinement of the Middle Scots dialect, his native tongue. Most of what King James wrote was translated into plain English before being published, but one text—because it took for its subject partly the use of Middle Scots for poetic purposes—got published in the original language. It consisted mainly of poems but contained also, in the most remarked-upon part of the book, a nonfiction “Treatise” of twenty pages, laying out “some reulis and cautelis”—precepts and pitfalls—“to be obseruit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie.” The title of James’s book? Essayes of a Prentise.

This book was first published in 1584, a full thirteen years before the appearance of Francis Bacon’s famous 1597 Essayes, traditionally held to mark the introduction of the essay as a formal concept into English writing. Granted, Bacon doesn’t quite hold up as the first English essayist even when we do omit James: some person—we’re not positive who, but almost certainly an Anglican divine named Joseph Hall—had published a collection of essays a year before Bacon, titled Remedies Against Discontentment,* and it’s likely that one or two of the “later” writers—William Cornwallis or Robert Johnson or Richard Greenham—had already begun writing their pieces when Bacon’s book came out. Even so, Bacon is the greatest in that little cluster of late-sixteenth-century English essayists and would seem to possess the clearest claim to the word in English. Yet King James’s book had preceded them all by more than a decade. Indeed, when James published his Essayes of a Prentise, Montaigne was still publishing his own Essais (the Frenchman was in between volumes I and II).

The most available conclusion for leaping to is that James is using the word in a general sense. An “essay,” we’re frequently told, means an attempt, a stab. Perhaps King James had been saying, self-deprecatingly, “I’m a mere prentise [an apprentice] here, and these are my essays, my beginner’s efforts.” It makes sense. The poet Jérôme d’Avost was using it the same way at the same time in France.

What if, however, King James had Montaigne in mind instead? On the face of it, the idea seems far-fetched. Montaigne’s book had been published just a few years before James finished his. An English translation would not appear for another twenty years. Doubtless there existed English men and women who’d already heard about the book, perhaps even seen it, but what are the odds that one of them was the eighteen-year-old king of Scotland?

Rather good, believe it or not. James’s tutor in the 1570s, the years during which Montaigne was composing his first volume of pieces, happens to have been a man named George Buchanan, a Scottish classicist and Renaissance giant who’d spent part of his life in France, where his poetry was much admired (“Easily the greatest poet of our age,” said his French publishers, an opinion echoed by Montaigne, among others). Buchanan was placed in charge of young James’s education and made on his pupil a lifelong impression of both respect and fear, deep enough that decades later, when James saw a man approaching him at court who looked like Buchanan, he started to tremble (Buchanan had drunkenly beaten the hell out of the boy James on at least one occasion).

James was not the only pupil of Buchanan’s who never forgot him. There had been another, in France, in the 1530s and early ’40s. For several years George Buchanan had taught at the Collège de Guyenne, in Bordeaux, and one of his students there, a young boarder who also came to him outside of class for private instruction, was a local boy named Michel Eyquem. The boy, whose precocity in Latin astonished his professors, was also a talented actor and performed in a few of Buchanan’s plays. Buchanan even considered him something of a favorite student and, running into Montaigne at the French court many years later, honored him by saying that their time together had inspired certain of Buchanan’s subsequent theories of humanistic pedagogy. Montaigne returned the compliment by praising his former teacher more than once in the Essais. They were well aware of each other, these two men, and remained so. And precisely as the younger was starting to publish in France, the elder became the tutor in Scotland to King James. Who, four years after Montaigne’s Essais were published, published his own Essayes.

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An ecologist's blunder led to the release of a "Russian doll" set of stomach-bursting parasites onto a remote Finnish island, a new study has revealed.

Thirty years ago, when ecologist Ilkka Hanski introduced Glanville fritillary butterflies (Melitaea cinxia) onto the island of Sottunga in the Åland archipelago, he planned to watch how a population of one species that had been placed inside a harsh habitat could survive.

But he had no idea that a trio of nested parasites would come along for the ride — with two parasites living inside another parasite, which was itself nested inside some of the butterflies.

Related: Zombie animals: 5 real-life cases of body-snatching

The latter parasites, the larvae of the parasitic wasps Hyposoter horticola, eat the Glanville caterpillars they are injected into from the inside out — erupting from their host's abdomen to spin a cocoon around the caterpillar's co**se, for pupation.

Two more species of parasites nest inside H. horticola. The second is a "hyperparasitoid": parasitic wasps called Mesochorus cf. stigmaticus. The third species is a bacterium, Wolbachia pipientis, which makes H. horticola more susceptible to M. stigmaticus. If all three stowaways are aboard a caterpillar host, H. horticola kills the caterpillar before being killed by M. stigmaticus. The hyperparasite burrows out 10 days later — consuming its way through the bacteria-ridden flesh of the first wasp parasite and then the carcass of the caterpillar.

Rising to fame in the 1950s, she was one of the greatest actresses of her era. In 1953, Hepburn became the first actress to win an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA Award for a single performance: her leading role in the romantic comedy Roman Holiday.

Even today, over half a century later, she remains one of just 15 people to earn an “EGOT” by winning all four major entertainment awards: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. By the 1960s, she was averaging more than one new film per year and, by everyone's estimation, she was on a trajectory to be a movie star for decades to come.

But then something funny happened: she stopped acting.

Despite being in her 30s and at the height of her popularity, Hepburn basically stopped appearing in films after 1967. She would perform in television shows or movies just five times during the rest of her life.

Instead, she switched careers. She spent the next 25 years working tirelessly for UNICEF, the arm of the United Nations that provides food and healthcare to children in war-torn countries. She performed volunteer work throughout Africa, South America, and Asia.

Hepburn's first act was on stage. Her next act was one of service. In December 1992, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her efforts, which is the highest civilian award of the United States.

We will return to her story in a moment.

Audrey Hepburn in 1956. Photo by Bud Fraker.
Efficient vs. Effective
You get one, precious life. How do you decide the best way to spend your time? Productivity gurus will often suggest that you focus on being effective rather than being efficient.

Efficiency is about getting more things done. Effectiveness is about getting the right things done. Peter Drucker, the well-known management consultant, once encapsulated the idea by writing, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

In other words, making progress is not just about being productive. It's about being productive on the right things.

But how do you decide what the “right things” are? One of the most trusted approaches is to use the Pareto Principle, which is more commonly known as the 80/20 Rule.

The 80/20 Rule states that, in any particular domain, a small number of things account for the majority of the results. For example, 80 percent of the land in Italy is owned by 20 percent of the people. Or, 75 percent of NBA championships are won by 20 percent of the teams. The numbers don't have to add up to 100. The point is that the majority of the results are driven by a minority of causes.

The Upside of the 80/20 Rule
When applied to your life and work, the 80/20 Rule can help you separate “the vital few from the trivial many.”

For example, business owners may discover the majority of revenue comes from a handful of important clients. The 80/20 Rule would recommend that the most effective course of action would be to focus exclusively on serving these clients (and on finding others like them) and either stop serving others or let the majority of customers gradually fade away because they account for a small portion of the bottom line.

This same strategy can be useful if you practice inversion and look at the sources of your problems. You may find that the majority of your complaints come from a handful of problem clients. The 80/20 Rule would suggest that you can clear out your backlog of customer service requests by firing these clients.

The 80/20 Rule is like a form of judo for life and work. By finding precisely the right area to apply pressure, you can get more results with less effort. It's a great strategy, and I have used it many times.

But there is a downside to this approach, as well, and it is often overlooked. To understand this pitfall, we return to Audrey Hepburn.

The Downside of the 80/20 Rule
Imagine it is 1967. Audrey Hepburn is in the prime of her career and trying to decide how to spend her time.

If she uses the 80/20 Rule as part of her decision-making process, she will discover a clear answer: do more romantic comedies.

Many of Hepburn's best films were romantic comedies like Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Charade. She starred in these four films between 1953 and 1963; by 1967, she was due for another one. They attracted large audiences, earned her awards, and were an obvious path to greater fame and fortune. Romantic comedies were effective for Audrey Hepburn.

In fact, even if we take into account her desire to help children through UNICEF, an 80/20 analysis might have revealed that starring in more romantic comedies was still the best option because she could have maximized her earning power and donated the additional earnings to UNICEF.

Of course, that's all well and good if she wanted to continue acting. But she didn't want to be an actress. She wanted to serve. And no reasonable analysis of the highest and best use of her time in 1967 would have suggested that volunteering for UNICEF was the most effective use of her time.

This is the downside of the 80/20 Rule: A new path will never look like the most effective option in the beginning.

Optimizing for Your Past or Your Future
Here's another example:

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, worked on Wall Street and climbed the corporate ladder to become senior vice-president of a hedge fund before leaving it all in 1994 to start the company.

If Bezos had applied the 80/20 Rule in 1993 in an attempt to discover the most effective areas to focus on in his career, it is virtually impossible to imagine that founding an internet company would have been on the list. At that point in time, there is no doubt that the most effective path—whether measured by financial gain, social status, or otherwise—would have been the one where he continued his career in finance.

The 80/20 Rule is calculated and determined by your recent effectiveness. Whatever seems like the “highest value” use of your time in any given moment will be dependent on your previous skills and current opportunities.

The 80/20 Rule will help you find the useful things in your past and get more of them in the future. But if you don’t want your future to be more of your past, then you need a different approach.

The downside of being effective is that you often optimize for your past rather than for your future.

Where to Go From Here
Here's the good news: given enough practice and enough time, the thing that previously seemed ineffective can become very effective. You get good at what you practice.

When Audrey Hepburn dialed down her acting career in 1967, volunteering didn't seem nearly as effective. But three decades later, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom—a remarkable feat she is unlikely to have accomplished by acting in more romantic comedies.

The process of learning a new skill or starting a new company or taking on a new adventure of any sort will often appear to be an ineffective use of time at first. Compared to the other things you already know how to do, the new thing will seem like a waste of time. It will never win the 80/20 analysis.

But that doesn't mean it's the wrong decision.

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