Doing Hard Things
This post was inspired by something that Tom7 said in his Pac Tom Project video - which I would highly recommend everyone watch! The tl;dr is that he runs along all the roads which criss-cross his native Pittsburgh, over multiple decades. Very inspiring and creatively presented. In it he states:
...but in any relevant talent, it's just a capacity to grid. ... Remember, the second hardest thing is getting started; the hardest thing is not giving up!
Output:Input
Something doesn't need to be hard to be worthwhile. The difficulty (herein synonymous with effort) of the journey and the value of the reward at the end are usually correlated, but don't necessarily follow a causative relationship. Usually the adjoining message here is that we should be judging the target for what it is, and to not assign or modify it's value by how hard or easy it is to obtain. For example, getting a masters degree in astrology is hard. It takes years of study, exams, education fees, etc. But that doesn't make it valuable (for any offended astrologists out there, I'd suggest a mug of camomile tea and a brief read-through of the Scientific Method). Conversely, putting in the work to foster a loving, equitable, and happy marriage is also hard. But it's far more valuable than that astrology degree, and so is more worthwhile given the large value output per unit effort input. The metric to maximise is the value of the output when it's been normalised to the cost of the input.
That being said, I think there are a couple of reasons to pursue something hard when the output of our time and toil doesn't bear a lot of fruit. That is, there are some pros to pursuing something hard for the sheer sake of it. When our comparison returns a low output to input ratio.
Reason 1 - to practice consistency.
The trick to doing something hard is to just be consistent. That's the most important thing. Everything that takes a lot of effort is only able to be successful tackled after it's been chopped up into bite-sized chunks, worked though one at a time. Sometimes it's easy to see how thse chunks will add up to reach the end goal (e.g. a project plan or a study schedule) and sometimes their contributions are only visible in hindsight (e.g. the steps taken to debug an issue, or the process taken to paint a painting). Either way, the hard thing is done in bits. Showing up and putting in the effort for every single one of those bits necessary requires consistency.
And that's what I personally find difficult to do. Doing the hard task or solving the difficult problem isn't itself the hard part. Nor is it all that daunting. The hard part is being consistent in working my way to a solution. Any old fool can sign up for a marathon, but not everyone can keep up the pace and stay in the race until the finish line is reached. Many give up early once the true picture of the necessary monotony rears it's ugly head. I don't want to be one of those quitters.
Reason 2 - to gain confidence
To benefit from the confidence boost that having achieved something difficult provides. That feeling of achievement and pride that comes with turning back to see the true extent of the path you've taken, so that you can turn around and start walking up an even taller mountain, confident in the knowledge that you'll be able to reach the summit. It's usually a term we don't take into account when considering the value of having achieved something.
Reason 3 - to enjoy the journey.
They say the journey is more important than the destination. Trite. But true.
Walking the walk - learning Japanese
The most pertinent example from my life which relates to this post is my on-and-off relationship with learning Japanese.
I've tried to learn Japanese on a handful of separate occasions over the last 5 years and, each and every time, I've failed (read given up). Part of my excuse has always been that the ends don't justify the means. I'm not wanting to learn the language to make friends. I don't have Japanese family. I don't need to be opening up work any more work opportunities or anything like that. There's nothing on paper telling me that I need to learn the language; there's no real pragmatic reason to do so. And yet I keep coming back to it. I've since realised that I'm don't need to pursue this goal to satisfy any of these "proper" reasons. As touched on above, I'm doing it to:
Find the joy in discovering something new, regardless of how useful it may be in my daily life. If it's a form of entertainment, then it still has a definitive use. I just like the language; I find it interesting. A train enthusiast doesn't need any reason to learn more about obscure trains, and I shouldn't need an reason for this either.
To prove to myself that I can do something that's hard. Something that most others fail to do (and that I've failed to do many many times before). Because then, next time I'm faced with a hard and supposedly impossible and insurmountable problem, I'll have second thoughts. Perhaps knowing that I've already done something like that will lead me to at least try, instead of giving up right at the start due to a belief that I won't be able to achieve whatever the thing may be. Learning a language requires the ultimate form of consistency. You have to show up every single day to learn new vocabulary and get comprehensible input, for years. I want to be able to tell myself that I have the self control, the willingness, and the power to do something like that.
To conclude
I've waffled on for long enough and I don't want to run the risk of sounding like some know-it-all self-help guru when this is something I've very much yet to get a grip on in my own life. In conclusion - do hard things, even if they're not "justifiable" in the traditional sense. You won't regret failure nearly as much as you will never having tried.