way more general but your post about “wants and shoulds” makes me ask: do you have any advice for learning how to do things that are hard? Asked another way, do you have any advice for how to embrace “the suck” of doing hard things without hating the process or yourself by the end of it?

boynextdoornews

Whenever we try to do some kind of task, our brains subconsciously do a quick assessment of effort and reward that we believe the task will take and will try to dissuade us from doing that task if our brains view that effort as too high for the reward. As you may have guessed, doing things that are hard fall exactly into this high effort questionable reward situation that our brains specifically try to avoid in order to conserve energy. The most common way our brains do this is to tell us "doing this isn't going to reach our goal with a perfect 100% completion, so I shouldn't bother". It's like trying to cut down a tree - if you can only cut through 5% of the tree, it feels like you might as well not have bothered because all of that effort results in a still-standing tree.

The best way to combat this is to do the most of what I know I can. I can't get myself to go to the gym, but maybe I can do five push-ups and five squats. I can't find and play a whole new game, but maybe I can install one of the games in my steam backlog. I can't learn how to make a whole game, but maybe I can watch one tutorial and follow along. I don't understand this entire chapter of my textbook, but maybe I can try to understand this one section. The more you do the reps, the easier it becomes to do a little bit more each time.

Once it gets internalized, the resistance starts to drain and you make more progress... especially because that progress is often compounded over time. You can't cut down the entire tree at once, but if you cut through 5% of the trunk today, 5% tomorrow, 3% the day after, 6% the day after, you'll eventually reach your goal of cutting it down. Doing the things that are hard usually aren't a waste at all, it's usually a progressive goal that we reach over time and multiple sessions. As we see progress being made, our brains become less reluctant to do them and we find it easier to get started.

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