Pardis Parker Im tired of people telling me to grind TED
my name is partus parker
i work in hollywood
and it is mostly rejection
the worst part is that people try to
stay your friend after rejecting you
just the other day i emailed the
proposal to someone
they emailed me back to reject the
proposal but then they signed off their
email by saying
but i’m rooting for you
anyhow
i didn’t know how to reply
so i just wrote back thanks
i’m rooting for you too
i didn’t understand man but then i
thought about like you know what
actually this makes sense it reminds me
of that famous scene from the movie 300
where a persian emissary took a proposal
to king leonidas and leonidas rejected
the proposal and the emissary said this
is madness and leonidas said madness
this
is
sparta
and then he kicked the emissary into a
bottomless pit of despair and while the
emissary was falling to his certain
death
leonidas peeked over the edge of the pit
he looked the emissary dead in the eyes
and he yelled out
but i’m rooting for you
in the emissary said thanks i’m rooting
for you too
i don’t need you to root for me man i
need your help
life’s hard i’m struggling i told my
friend i was wrong she goes haven’t you
ever read any autobiographies
anyone who’s made it has had to struggle
and i was just like yeah you know who
else has had to struggle
anyone who hasn’t made it
yeah but we don’t hear their stories
no because for some reason they don’t
get book deals
page one life was a struggle
page two
the end
ah the book was both depressing and
brief
life’s hard man struggle i’m tired of
people telling me to grind i’m tired of
it i’m tired of it i don’t believe it
anymore i saw this quote the other day
said they sleep
i grind
why
like maybe you wouldn’t need to grind so
much if you were better rested
like maybe the motto should be
they sleep
i sleep
because it’s night time
and i’m not a literal owl
i saw another quote that said the grind
is everything
i was just like no
it’s not
they do studies about what old people
regret and zero of them ever say
man i wish i grinded more
now the number one answer in all those
days is man i wish i didn’t work so hard
cause working sucks
and we’re worried about robots taking
our jobs
why
[Applause]
take them
take all of them
and then i am flipping burgers is my
identity just like dude get a new
identity if you can flip a burger you
can hold a mic and segue to a job that
will make your parents even less
impressed
tired man tired of people telling me to
cry i think part of the problem too
is a lot of people are just grinding to
get rich you know and not a little rich
but like rich rich just seems selfish to
me people say oh well you shouldn’t
judge you know why people want to get
rich if you want to get rich to give
back to society you ever think of that
partis
like no
i haven’t
because i listen to music
case in point 2010 bruno mars released a
song called billionaire
first line of the chorus
i want to be a billionaire
so
effing bad
like oh
oh why bruno
why do you want to be a billionaire is
it to give back
to the peoples of the world
here’s the full course
i want to be a billionaire
so effing bad
to buy
all of the things
i never had
and it’s just like yo
bruno
what did you never have that a billion
dollars is your barrier to entry
like you’re just sitting off in the
corner somewhere impoverished just
thinking to yourself oh
oh if only i had more money
so i could finally buy a
large bridge
[Applause]
oh really help with my predicament
like oh
oh
oh if only my fortunes would turn so i
could
finally purchased the
suez canal
it really helped tide me over
[Applause]
like oh
oh
oh
oh if only i had a billion dollars so i
could
finally afford a
dyson vacuum cleaner
real talk that is the only reason i want
to be rich is to buy a dyson vacuum
cleaner i know that they’re just regular
vacuums but i see the commercials and i
buy all the hype all of it it’s like
what am i going to do go back to using a
regular vacuum like a pleb
like a peasant like some commoner whose
vacuum doesn’t have
aerospace engineering
just like yeah i could buy a used car or
i could buy a vacuum which instead of
using bags uses cyclone technology
do you understand i could clean my
carpets with the suction power of a
natural disaster
you know what’s really crazy is that if
you go to the dyson website says the
james tyson went through over 5127
prototypes before landing on a working
model and you’re supposed to read that
and be like oh wow like i guess he like
spent a lot of time like perfecting the
technology and it’s just like yeah maybe
or maybe he just sucks at making vacuums
so i don’t believe in grinding to get
rich man
you know what’s crazy you know what’s
crazy it’s never successful people
telling you to grind
they don’t notice that never is
warren buffett never goes jogging
wearing a t-shirt that says all day
airnay
no
grind’s just a concept
vented by corporations to increase the
productivity of workers
but you know what i hope robots do take
our jobs
when they do the first job they take
is writing motivational quotes
so we can focus on jobs that robots
can’t do you know like creating art
i know what you’re thinking like oh well
actually part of us know robots can use
artificial intelligence now to create
art and it’s only a matter of time
before their art is better than our art
this is like yeah
maybe but for the time being they still
need my help to tell them which photos
have stop signs in them
so until that changes i’ma let them do
the grinding my name is partus parker
thank you for coming to my ted talk