The Value in Doing Hard Things

In an earlier blog post, The Value In Job Hopping, I talked about doing hard things just for the sake of doing hard things. Today, I am going to expand on the value in doing hard things, and how doing hard things actually makes other things easier. I am a massive consumer of entrepreneur media which often revolves around productivity and how to be more productive. A lot of this media involves article titles that look like this: “The Morning Routine Jeff Bezos Calls Fool Proof” or “Elon Musk Added this Technique to his Schedule to Get 4 More Hours out of his Day”. Articles or videos like this typically revolve around time management, morning routines, scheduling tactics, minute blocking, etc.

Something most of these ultra successful entrepreneurs have in common is that they all workout in the morning. At first I thought it was maybe that exercise cleared their head, they found it grounded them, or maybe it was a time that sparked some of their best ideas. However, my favorite explanation of it comes from Relator/YouTuber Ryan Serhant who said “I workout in the morning so the hardest thing I have to do that day is already done.” Jeff Bezos also has noted that he schedules his hardest meetings for earlier in the day. While this is a time management skill, it also shows the value of doing hard things. When you do one hard thing it can snow ball into having the confidence to take on other hard things you may have previously thought were impossible.

Doing hard things first sets you up for success for two reasons: 1.) you prove to yourself that you can do hard things so you get a confidence boost, and 2.) usually, it makes other things easier. 

With that first point, I do hard things so that when I come upon something that I perceive as difficult, I can literally say to myself “Max, you did 75 burpees this morning, I think you can handle fixing this spreadsheet.” Your brain can be trained to think of tasks as difficult and result in you delaying them or never trying them. As you continue to train your brain to acknowledge something is difficult and then proceed to prioritize doing it, and completing the task, your brain will begin to re-wire to not avoid things that are perceived as difficult. For example, 75 burpees seems difficult, but every time you complete that task, you are training your brain to understand that you can complete things even when they are hard. So the next time you are faced with a difficult task, your brain will think that you should at least try it to see if you can accomplish it like you’ve done with others. 

Second, deciding to do a hard thing makes doing other hard things easier. Our brain’s natural inclination is to compare two different things against one another and while spreadsheets makes me go cross-eyed, comparatively it is much easier than doing 75 burpees. Additionally, difficult tasks can result in saving time and/or money later. Spending time formatting the spreadsheet now will allow me to not spend time on manually entering formulas weekly. This is something that is most often taught in the financial world. Have you ever heard, “saving up money now will pay off later?” I remember hearing it often and it is a consistent message that banks and credit unions continue to market to us now. This idea of putting in effort now to save time or money later can apply to many life things: packing your lunch the night before, picking out your outfit the night before, making your to-do list at the end of the day, meal prepping, etc. This idea isn’t groundbreaking, but for me, framing it as doing the hard thing makes me more excited to accomplish it. 

Society often glamorizes ultra successful people with idolizing how they only get 4 hours of sleep per night and work the other 20 hours of the day 7 days a week. What they do not show you are the tasks they complete to make that work easier. That life is much sexier than showing someone who packs their lunch the night before and takes the time to do the difficult tasks first to set their day up for success. We will dive more into the work/life “balance” and the workload expectations of today’s companies in a later blog post, but for now, we encourage you to continue to do the hard things. Schedule them for early in your day and remember that you are capable of more than you think.