She spent quite a lot of time thinking about which particular project would give her a real sense of achievement. What she finally decided was that this was the ideal opportunity to read Proust’s masterpiece, A la recherche du temps perdu, in French. The amount of time lightning rods were typically expected to be on duty would be just right for working through a French text. On the one hand she wouldn’t be reading a lot at any one time, so she wouldn’t get discouraged. On the other hand, it was quite a long book, so by the time she finished she’d probably have enough money for Harvard Law School. She could look at the volumes on her shelf and see how far she had to go.

So she went to the university bookstore and bought the complete set, and she started at page one, paragraph one on her first day on the job.

Sure enough, the idea worked perfectly. The fact that she had to struggle with the French meant she didn’t have a lot of attention to spare for anything else that might be going on. She’d go through as much text as she could, underlining words she didn’t know with a pencil. At night she’d look up the words and read through the passage again. The next day she’d read on. Within a month she was having to look up fewer words. Within six months she was reading the French almost as well as she read English—and that was entirely the result of doing it on a daily basis.

So unlike most lightning rods she was able to look at something she’d actually accomplished with the time. It was no different from reading a book while you have a massage, or a jacuzzi, except that she’d done it on a daily basis for six months. Instead of cluttering up her mind with bad feelings, she had actually improved her mind. And by the time she reached the end of A la recherche du temps perdu she’d have earned $100,000 just out of time spent reading Proust.

Pas mal.