Three-time British world memory champion Ben Pridmore once made the decision to break the world record for memorizing the digits of pi to 50,000 decimal places. Halfway through the process, he saw an article announcing that a Japanese man had just exceeded 83,000. So he stopped.
Any student of mine will notice that I never discuss motivation when it comes to acting; I believe the writer has taken care of that for the actor because the performer must continue what they’ve written regardless of the why. The why for actors is to get to the end of the script and the why for the character is already factored into the plot, given circumstances and, oftentimes, the dialogue. The progress of actors seeking their character’s motivation is an unnecessary impediment, like a man trying to find a motivation to breathe. Just do it and you’ll find out why. Instead of asking why the character is speaking, it’s much more useful to ask what the character is trying to achieve. When it comes to living life and reaching goals, however, your motivation is a handy thing to be aware of as it can save you time, energy and even money. Pridmore’s motivation for spending countless hours memorizing the digits of pi
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