Sprezzatura: The art of getting a lot done without breaking a sweat - at least outwardly

The Oxford English Dictionary defines sprezzatura as “studied carelessness”. (Representational image: Drew Coffman via Unsplash)

A few days ago, I came across a new word in a book review in an American magazine. It is actually an Italian word for a quality that many of us may have noticed and envied in friends and colleagues. “Sprezzatura” is the art of getting a lot done while appearing to be idling. I had no idea that there could be a word for this.

I had quite a few friends in college with this talent. At least one of them had a photographic memory - when it was pre-exam crunch time, he could perfectly recall everything that a professor had said and written on the blackboard. So while the rest of us feverishly worked through the night, he would watch some TV in the hostel common room and go to bed early. Next morning, he would ace the exam while we struggled.

There were some other sprezzatura students whose studying hours remained a mystery. They did not seem to spend many hours in a semester with their books. At least one of my friends would start getting stoned to high heaven the moment the sun set, yet consistently scored more marks in every subject than many of us. In fact, when he topped the class in a particular course, his outward reaction was acute embarrassment. He really had had no intention of topping a course and nearly apologized for the misdeed.

The history of the word is a rather unlikely one. It first appears in The Book of the Courtier, written by 16^th century Italian diplomat Baldassare Castiglione. During his five-year stint at the Spanish royal court, he keenly observed the goings-on around him and wrote this book on what makes a successful courtier—someone who his lord is fond of and supports. After all, these were the times when falling out of favour could lead to an early death.

Castiglione defined a courtier’s key quality as “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it”. The courtier must display “an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them”. He must make sure that he does not appear calculating, crucial in a court where ambition and intrigue abound.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines sprezzatura as “studied carelessness”. In some people, one supposes, this quality is innate; others have to work hard to develop it.

Those who have seen videos of David Gower bat would know that the man was born with it. The nearly-slow-motion elegance with which his bat would come down on a delivery and send the ball shooting to the cover point boundary was a wonder to watch. He never seemed to be working hard.

This, unfortunately, also led to his international career being curtailed. The disciplinarian English captain Graham Gooch decided that he was lazy and did not apply himself enough. Among other issues was Gower’s refusal to come for physical exercise sessions at the crack of dawn that Gooch insisted on holding. Gower saw no value in this. Gooch made sure that he was dropped from the team. Geoffrey Boycott, whose dogged batting style and temperament were as antithetical to Gower’s as is possible, was outraged. “He’s scored 8,000 Test runs. No lazy batsman can ever do that. I should know, because I’ve scored more than 8,000 too.”

Years after both Gower and Gooch had retired, Gooch admitted that he had been wrong and issued what amounted to a public apology. When asked by the BBC about this, Gower smiled, shrugged and asked: “It’s a bit late for that now, isn’t it?”

So sprezzatura can work against you too.

Many film stars too seem to embody sprezzatura. Someone like Brad Pitt comes immediately to mind. In many of his most successful movies, he exudes an unharried élan while simultaneously conveying a deadliness inside the character. Robert de Niro spent the first 30 years of his career being intense to the point of being obsessive sometimes, but in the last 20 years, he has relaxed visibly, playing comedy roles with an effortless coolness. In Hindi movies, the late Irrfan certainly had it. Irrespective of the quality of script and direction, his sprezzatura would lift the worth of many films he appeared in.

Many office environments, of course, resemble the Spanish royal court. All the way up the hierarchy, employees have to appear agreeable and non-threatening to their bosses and owners. Managers have to actively work at developing this quality. A lot of pretending and disingenuity become necessary to thrive and often even to survive. This is something business schools don’t really teach you, and one has to figure out the workplace dynamics and what the boss expects through a trial-and-error process and adapt.

And, of course, this is a bane of most bureaucracies.

This often makes a firm—or a ministry or a department—less than optimally efficient, but this is a fundamental failing of human nature that is difficult to correct. After all, who does not like a sycophant or a yes man?

After I discovered this word, I shared it on a WhatsApp group of collegemates. Within minutes, someone asked: “But what’s a word for someone like me who always manages to look busy but is not doing a jot of work?” A minute later, someone else replied: “Management”.