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So your recipe for doing hard things is doing hard things?

by F3nd0 4y ago

ketzo 4y ago
Every single piece of advice for doing hard things eventually boils down to this, yes. But even if you read a thousand different ways to explain/justify/dress up "do hard things", you only need one to really click with you.
- 6510 4y ago
  A remarkably undisciplined friend of mine had a different theory: Just purchases things to help do the hard things. If you don't feel sufficiently ridiculous you need to buy more.
  - rconti 4y ago
    We have numerous very expensive pieces of fitness equipment that we use quite regularly. I mean, sure, you don't NEED expensive equipment to exercise, but if you don't do it without the expensive equipment, and you DO do it with the equipment, why not buy the thing? Of course, there's plenty of expensive fitness equipment gathering dust, but don't let someone else tell you "you don't need all that stuff" if it works for you. If it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid!
seizethecheese 4y ago
That’s the hard thing about hard things.
chrisfosterelli 4y ago
Yeah, because then harder things become easier, and eventually the thing that was once an "impossibly hard thing" is now a "challengingly hard but possible thing".
- doitLP 4y ago
  That’s the thing. Things rarely seem to get easier for me. I have just as much repulsion to many tasks as I did 5 years ago. In fact in many ways it’s worse because it all feels futile no matter how much I make. And yet the only way to win is not to play. So I work as hard as I possibly can force myself to in hopes that I’ll be able to retire as early as possible. Any advice on how to make eating frogs easier, I’d love to hear it. I get up early, I take cold showers every day, I do HIIT workouts every other day, and I have a complex productivity system for tracking what I need to do, I ruthlessly prioritize, and I do a pretty good job and closing the laptop and not working in the evening and weekends. I hate it all and can’t wait for when I can stop all of it.
  - chrisfosterelli 4y ago
    Hey friend, this sounds like a bit of burnout. If you're anything like me, you may be a bit of a maximizer. One can optimize everything to the point it's not fun anymore. Remember to spend at least some of your time doing something for joy. Do something new. Something you're bad at. Drop it the second it's not fun anymore. Or take a trip. Ensure you're spending time on friends and family. Just waste time sometimes and don't feel bad about it. Focus on a task thats not actually the top priority but is more fun now and again. It doesn't get easier. You pick up more tasks and harder tasks. You can make things that were once harder things easier things, but you're always going to be working hard if you're improving. Make sure you do it sustainably -- it's a marathon and not a sprint. If you rush to retire but don't build a life you want to retire to it will just make it worse.
rconti 4y ago
The most powerful thing for me has been realizing how quickly habits develop, good and bad. It can be so easy to say "oh, I'll start running TOMORROW", or "why bother going for a run today, when I'm never going to be able to keep it up?" But actually, surprisingly, things you don't initially want to do can become positive habits in a very short time period. Like, 3-5 times. Of course, the flip side is also true; I've often fallen OUT of workout habits just as easily. But at the end of the day, perfection is not the goal. You shouldn't avoid starting a new positive habit just because you know you'll probably lose the habit again. You can always pick it up once more! Someone who is a regular gym-goer for a few years, then becomes sedentary, then picks up running for a half decade, then moves on to cycling, then falls out of the habit, is probably better off than someone who never bothers to try.
- wruza 4y ago
  I don’t run, but I lift. One important thing to realize by myself was that I must not to listen to any exercise advice. Which told me “don’t workout every day, it’s bad! change muscle groups! take rest!”. So I had a hard time converting it into a habit and got stuck in overdo-sore-timeout cycle. The key thing is to do/start with the same thing everyday, with slight variations in the end. Make it an autopilot routine during which you can be mentally elsewhere. Only then you may think “I have to…” and [click] it’s done before you even notice.
- balfirevic 4y ago
  > The most powerful thing for me has been realizing how quickly habits develop, good and bad. That's what the entire internet tells me, but it just doesn't happen to me. Whatever it is that I wish to keep up, I have to decide to do it every time, roughly the same as I did the first couple of times. Yes, that includes brushing the teeth.
  - Dessesaf 4y ago
    I agree completely. Taking a shower, brushing my teeth and other routine things have never become a habit for me either. I have to put in the same effort every time. Of course there are habitual things in my life, but I can see no common characteristics. Total time spend certainly isn't it. Amusingly, this has made it almost trivial for me to quit smoking despite being a smoker for many years. I just never developed a habit for it, so dropping it was as simple as just not smoking.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
I have a mantra: "Success breeds success." I like to establish the habit of consistently succeeding. I feel that we often need to start with "small" successes, then gradually increase the complexity/ambition. Before you know it, you're routinely completing pretty damn ambitious stuff.
- Phileosopher 4y ago
  I can testify to this, but would also like to add something that OP's ACT idea somewhat skirts that I think is a bit understated: the importance of knowing when to NOT THINK. When I was an accountant, my teacher once said "How do you eat an elephant?" (dramatic pause) "One bite at a time." Frequently, the line between amazing achievement and wistful thinking is shutting up, turning off the "what if" part of the brain, and plowing into it. I'm not saying people shouldn't think ahead, but smart people usually have the opposite problem of mental over-investment toward non-result-generating thoughts.

So your recipe for doing hard things is doing hard things?

by F3nd0 4y ago

So your recipe for doing hard things is doing hard things?

Every single piece of advice for doing hard things eventually boils down to this, yes. But even if you read a thousand different ways to explain/justify/dress up "do hard things", you only need one to really click with you.

6510 4y ago
A remarkably undisciplined friend of mine had a different theory: Just purchases things to help do the hard things. If you don't feel sufficiently ridiculous you need to buy more.
- rconti 4y ago
  We have numerous very expensive pieces of fitness equipment that we use quite regularly. I mean, sure, you don't NEED expensive equipment to exercise, but if you don't do it without the expensive equipment, and you DO do it with the equipment, why not buy the thing? Of course, there's plenty of expensive fitness equipment gathering dust, but don't let someone else tell you "you don't need all that stuff" if it works for you. If it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid!

seizethecheese 4y ago

That’s the hard thing about hard things.

chrisfosterelli 4y ago

Yeah, because then harder things become easier, and eventually the thing that was once an "impossibly hard thing" is now a "challengingly hard but possible thing".

doitLP 4y ago
That’s the thing. Things rarely seem to get easier for me. I have just as much repulsion to many tasks as I did 5 years ago. In fact in many ways it’s worse because it all feels futile no matter how much I make. And yet the only way to win is not to play. So I work as hard as I possibly can force myself to in hopes that I’ll be able to retire as early as possible. Any advice on how to make eating frogs easier, I’d love to hear it. I get up early, I take cold showers every day, I do HIIT workouts every other day, and I have a complex productivity system for tracking what I need to do, I ruthlessly prioritize, and I do a pretty good job and closing the laptop and not working in the evening and weekends. I hate it all and can’t wait for when I can stop all of it.
- chrisfosterelli 4y ago
  Hey friend, this sounds like a bit of burnout. If you're anything like me, you may be a bit of a maximizer. One can optimize everything to the point it's not fun anymore. Remember to spend at least some of your time doing something for joy. Do something new. Something you're bad at. Drop it the second it's not fun anymore. Or take a trip. Ensure you're spending time on friends and family. Just waste time sometimes and don't feel bad about it. Focus on a task thats not actually the top priority but is more fun now and again. It doesn't get easier. You pick up more tasks and harder tasks. You can make things that were once harder things easier things, but you're always going to be working hard if you're improving. Make sure you do it sustainably -- it's a marathon and not a sprint. If you rush to retire but don't build a life you want to retire to it will just make it worse.

rconti 4y ago

The most powerful thing for me has been realizing how quickly habits develop, good and bad. It can be so easy to say "oh, I'll start running TOMORROW", or "why bother going for a run today, when I'm never going to be able to keep it up?" But actually, surprisingly, things you don't initially want to do can become positive habits in a very short time period. Like, 3-5 times. Of course, the flip side is also true; I've often fallen OUT of workout habits just as easily. But at the end of the day, perfection is not the goal. You shouldn't avoid starting a new positive habit just because you know you'll probably lose the habit again. You can always pick it up once more! Someone who is a regular gym-goer for a few years, then becomes sedentary, then picks up running for a half decade, then moves on to cycling, then falls out of the habit, is probably better off than someone who never bothers to try.

wruza 4y ago
I don’t run, but I lift. One important thing to realize by myself was that I must not to listen to any exercise advice. Which told me “don’t workout every day, it’s bad! change muscle groups! take rest!”. So I had a hard time converting it into a habit and got stuck in overdo-sore-timeout cycle. The key thing is to do/start with the same thing everyday, with slight variations in the end. Make it an autopilot routine during which you can be mentally elsewhere. Only then you may think “I have to…” and [click] it’s done before you even notice.
balfirevic 4y ago
> The most powerful thing for me has been realizing how quickly habits develop, good and bad. That's what the entire internet tells me, but it just doesn't happen to me. Whatever it is that I wish to keep up, I have to decide to do it every time, roughly the same as I did the first couple of times. Yes, that includes brushing the teeth.
- Dessesaf 4y ago
  I agree completely. Taking a shower, brushing my teeth and other routine things have never become a habit for me either. I have to put in the same effort every time. Of course there are habitual things in my life, but I can see no common characteristics. Total time spend certainly isn't it. Amusingly, this has made it almost trivial for me to quit smoking despite being a smoker for many years. I just never developed a habit for it, so dropping it was as simple as just not smoking.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

I have a mantra: "Success breeds success." I like to establish the habit of consistently succeeding. I feel that we often need to start with "small" successes, then gradually increase the complexity/ambition. Before you know it, you're routinely completing pretty damn ambitious stuff.

Phileosopher 4y ago
I can testify to this, but would also like to add something that OP's ACT idea somewhat skirts that I think is a bit understated: the importance of knowing when to NOT THINK. When I was an accountant, my teacher once said "How do you eat an elephant?" (dramatic pause) "One bite at a time." Frequently, the line between amazing achievement and wistful thinking is shutting up, turning off the "what if" part of the brain, and plowing into it. I'm not saying people shouldn't think ahead, but smart people usually have the opposite problem of mental over-investment toward non-result-generating thoughts.