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