"Press lighter, Dad."
What if the secret to better results—in life and in love—is not to try harder?
“Press lighter, Dad.”
My son Quinn is 48 hours from launching a business at his high school’s CEO Trade Show. He’s perfected a chicken quesadilla with a secret sauce, and he’s spent months planning and purchasing everything he needs for the grand opening. His company is called Quinnsadillas.
Two night before he goes live, our whole family and two hired friends are madly prepping food at a local Kitchen Incubator. I’ve been assigned eighty pounds of cheese to shred, but I’ve never used a food processor and I’m drastically under-qualified for the job.
I ram the first block of cheese into the processor, push the button, and the motor revs but the blade doesn’t spin. I tell Quinn he purchased the most impenetrable cheese humankind has ever created. He gives me the kind of look you’d give a senior citizen who tells you their TV is broken because they can’t figure out how to turn it on.
“Show me what you’re doing,” he says.
So I do, and the motor hums but the blade stands still, and I stand back with a smug little look on my face.
Quinn smiles again and tells me I have to press the cheese into the processor more lightly. I was pushing so hard it was pinning the blade in place. And sure enough, I feed the next block in gently, and voila, instantly shredded cheese.
Press lighter. Less effort. Better results.
Go figure.
A couple hours later I’ve graduated to chicken-shredding duty.
I wield a claw in each hand—looking like Marvel’s Wolverine turned prep cook—and attack the boiled chicken breasts as violently as Wolverine attacks the bad guys. I tear into a breast and it simply breaks into two big pieces. So I tear into each of those pieces, and they break into two more pieces. I might as well be dicing with a knife. No shreds to be seen.
I lament to Quinn that he purchased the softest chicken breasts that humankind has ever produced, and he looks at me like I’ve forgotten how to use the remote again.
“Show me what you’re doing,” he says.
So I do, and once again he smiles.
“You have to press lighter, Dad. Just like the cheese.”
Sure enough, when I scrape gently with the claws, the chicken shreds quickly.
Press lighter. Less effort. Better results.
And suddenly I’m like Bruce Willis at the end of The Sixth Sense, seeing so many previous scenes so differently.
Six months earlier, I was in our kitchen at home, making my hallowed Thanksgiving Eve chili.
My work day had run long so I was moving quickly to catch up before dinnertime. I lined up all the cans of tomatoes and peppers and beans in a row on the counter, applied the can opener to the first one, and furiously spun the little handle.
Nothing. The can was unaltered. I lamented to my wife that her can opener was busted.
She took the can opener from my hands and promptly opened a large can of crushed tomatoes.
“You have to turn it more slowly,” she explained. “When you spin it too fast, the teeth can’t get a grip.”
Turn slower. Less effort. Better results.
I’m starting to see a pattern here.
Several weeks before the cheese and the chicken, Quinn had the first tennis meet of his senior season on the same night as his senior honors banquet.
He wanted to play tennis very much, and he wanted to go to the banquet not at all. I, on the other hand, was hell-bent on getting him to the banquet, so I’d hatched a plan. I got permission to drive him home myself, packed him a change of clothes, cut out of work early, and broke traffic laws the whole way to the tennis meet. If the match went quickly, we’d have just enough time to get to the banquet.
The match didn’t cooperate. Long points. Multiple deuces in every game. Full sets. Tie-breakers.
As soon as he won it, I hustled him to the car and tore out of the parking lot like his water had broken and he was about to give birth.
“Dad,” he said from the passenger seat, “if you really want to go to the banquet, let’s do it. But we’re going to miss the food, and I’d rather just have dinner with you.”
Years ago, when I didn’t know what a closed and controlling heart was, I’d have blown past that moment and hit the accelerator. However, when his words landed in my chest, I could feel the all-too-familiar resistance to them. So I breathed and opened my heart and instantly knew: rushing him to the banquet was my way of managing my grief about him leaving us.
As if watching him honored could freeze him in time.
Instead, we stopped on the way home at a new Mexican restaurant we’d been wanting to try. And our conversation over tacos will, I’m sure, be one of my favorite memories of his beloved childhood.
Conventional wisdom says more effort gets you better results. Go faster. Work longer. Push harder. But what if sometimes—perhaps even a lot of the time—the opposite is true?
“Press lighter, Dad.”
Press lighter, everyone.
Can you think of a situation in your life in which pressing lighter might yield better results? If so, leave a “yes” in the comments!
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This is beautiful. I’ve often noticed that I’m the kind of person who does things forcefully, thinking that’s what’s needed in so many situations. I’ve often admired the gentle touch of some of my friends, though it often feels to me like a strange and dangerous way to move through the world.
This feels like a perfect experiment today. Something small and lovely to try on. Thank you 🙏
You have raised a wise soul! My father often delivered the same message to me. He was a flight instructor and taught me to fly. He often reminded me that white knuckling the wheel did not help landing the plane. Everything happens slow and smooth, even in an emergency, calm prevails over quick reaction.