What is difficult

It is Sunday evening around eight pm, I already have put in a full day’s work and my body is winding down for a calm evening. Unfortunately, I promised myself to work out every day in the evening, with no excuses. But naturally, that is the last thing I want to do at the moment, I would rather sit on the couch and read something or mindlessly scroll Twitter thinking it is a productive activity not like the other scrolling places like Facebook, Instagram or God help TikTok. Picking myself up from the couch and getting the workout done seems like an insurmountable obstacle it will be so boring and I feel lethargic. It is just difficult.

But what is this difficult? Now that I think about it, this is not the first time I have had these feelings and thoughts before something I’m not looking forward to. It seems to be the same thing no matter the activity or challenge. But I think there are distinctions between the two types of difficulties. We can put them in two categories, the first one is “hard” (struggle) and the second one is “difficult” (lazy). It is not important or clear to me where the boundaries are but for ease of understanding let’s say there are two distinct categories where we can store things.

With these two categories I want to distinguish between two types of difficulties the first one is “hard”, imagine yourself working hard laborious physical work for twelve hours straight and then coming home in the evening after an hour-long drive and trying to do some more physical work. Now this is “hard” and is going to be a big struggle. This type of difficulty goes into the first category “hard”. In the second category “difficult” goes things like imagine me after 8 hours of work at my computer a little nap and a little bit of a lazy chill time on a couch, then afterward trying to start the workout. Although it may sound easy to read this now, especially after a comparison of the hard twelve-hour physical workday. But I can assure you that that particular moment was not that easy, I was feeling lethargic, with no motivation at all and not looking forward to the upcoming sad and boring workout. I would put this type of obstacle in the second category “difficult” although it is more doable than the things in the first category still it requires effort to do it, if I didn’t push myself every time through that difficulty I would not do it. And there have been so many times when I would not do things because they seemed difficult at the moment.

Also, I noticed when I start doing things from the second category that I labeled as “difficult” they become quite easy once I start doing it or the thing doesn’t seem that difficult anymore or I even begin to enjoy doing it. Now that is the case what happened to my long-dreaded Sunday workout first five minutes were hard but afterward, I was feeling very good. There has been so much written about the problem of starting things, that the hardest part about the task you are not looking forward to is just getting yourself through the initial hurdle of starting. Get the ball going as they say.

In contrast, the thing that usually is not happening in the first category “hard” is that things don’t get easier once you start doing them. It is just a slug and hard all through the activity. Also, it requires so much more energy and willpower to start doing and keep doing it. I suspect willpower plays a crucial role in things that we do and don’t do and the types of difficulties we choose to do. There is a great book written about willpower Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength I don’t want to go too deep the rabbit hole because this topic is so interesting and would warrant an investigation of its own. But the crucial part of the book is that every day we are given a certain amount of willpower (imagine a tank of fuel) and various mental-related activities we do deplete or will power out tank is getting emptier and emptier through the day as we make decisions. Until we are out of fuel or willpower altogether and at that point, we are pretty much useless, and the best we can do is fall back to our habits and heuristics or all out reject to operate.

One thing I want to clarify about the two categories I mentioned is that it’s not about mental or physical. It doesn’t matter how you get exhausted. For example, if I was programming for 8 hours at my computer and later in the evening decide I will do some side project coding. For me, this would come close to the struggle I would experience in the same category as other activities in the first category “hard” as the example I gave in the previous paragraph about working physical work for twelve hours and then coming and trying to do some additional work. For example, if I would be out for a day doing physical work and come back home and try to work on a side project in the evening this would probably go into the second category “difficult”. I’m not trying to make a point that some types of activities are better or harder in exhausting yourself. What I want to point out is that throughout the day you will be faced with activities that will seem difficult maybe because you are already exhausted from the day’s work or the activity is very challenging or a combination of both the point is that you can categorize these activities in two groups first one is “hard” (struggle) and another is “difficult” (lazy).

What is the purpose of knowing in which group first or second the thing goes? It is to decide which activities to start and struggle through and which ones not to. I think the activities in the first category will lead to burnout and failure and things in the second category is what will lead to success and progress. And I think this matters the most when you are playing a long-term game and are thinking in terms of years. In a perfect world, I wish I could be a terminator and subscribe to no retreat hustle culture. Where you push and push through everything, through any obstacle no matter how hard the activity is, you just endure and struggle through with fists clenched and teeth grinding, like a bulldozer crushing through everything in your way. Maybe it is just me who is weak-minded and doesn’t have enough motivation and strength to struggle through everything. But I think even in the case of a bulldozer it has to pick what kind of walls it can go through and what types of materials it can crush, pick the wrong ones and you may lose a tire or an engine will blow up. Then you may need to take the bulldozer out of service for a while for a repair or it may be damaged beyond repair.

Even in the case where the problem could be my shortcomings of not having enough character and not having a wild dog hustle in me to struggle through everything. I think the logic would persist that it would be in my self-interest not to break myself in the process. Also if I always pick the hardest things and try to fight through them what would happen in the long term is I would lose these battles in one way or another by being too exhausted to continue or not having the skill or energy to win them. But while being occupied with these hardest things in category one I wouldn’t have time for or I would be too exhausted for activities in category two that I could succeed at and get these smaller wins to compound over time for the big win.

Some people may say that I’m arguing to be lazy by not doing activities in category one, but my counterargument is that things in category two are already difficult to do otherwise I would not put them in any of the categories. You pushing through and doing activities from category two already requires a lot of effort and are not things that you are inclined to do easily and for enjoyment or at least starting is not going to be enjoyable. I’m arguing about pacing yourself. You can’t finish a marathon by sprinting the first kilometer in the beginning it is just not going to work. However, it is not clear to me where the boundary between categories one and two is. The boundary may be different for different people some people may take less and some more or can take more or less of different types. To take the marathon’s example again you can’t run a marathon at a pro athlete’s pace you need to run at a pace that your body is currently able to handle.

I want to emphasize that this is not an argument for not striving to be better or get better at something because that is what you are doing in category two. The argument is about the best or most effective way to get better or get somewhere, how to reach your goals and dreams. The idea comes from my frustrations, when I realize that there have been periods where I was doing too much or the intensity has been too high and in the end, I failed or got burned out, where If I had lowered the temperature or intensity or no do the the thing at all or not rush it that much I would have ended better.

If you think about it there rarely is any human endeavor where you can blindly crank up the maximum temperature or spend the whole time in a zone that is not too demanding and still succeed. It seems to me there is always some optimal middle range where you need to spend your time to win or be the best. And it is up to every person to decide where that optimal range is. Spend too much time in hot and you will burn spend too much time in cold and you’ll freeze and get left behind.