We all face moments when we are confronted with choices to do difficult things.
For me, getting up at 5:00 AM every weekday is difficult but I know that I have to research, write, edit and publish this newsletter every week.
At the moment that is what it takes, that is what is required, nothing less.
Either I can sleep in every weekday in my warm comfortable bed or I can get up and do, at least for me, meaningful work.
“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?
So you were born to feel ‘nice’? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
So for you, whether it’s pursuing a challenging career path, starting a new venture, or taking on a personal endeavour, deciding to do the difficult can feel daunting and overwhelming.
Know that the struggle to do difficult things is a common thread that binds us together, but it doesn’t have to hold us back.
In fact, embracing these challenges can be transformative and lead to personal growth and fulfilment.
I recently came across Cal Newport’s post, ‘Brandon Sanderson’s Advice for Doing Hard Things‘ which is a great summary of Brandon Sanderson’s ‘The Common Lie Writers Tell You — YallStayHome 2020 Afternoon Keynote‘ video from Youtube.
These pieces of content inspired me to write this volume of Decide, I would recommend reading and watching them.
My favourite quote from Brandon is below:
“I can do hard things. Doing hard things has intrinsic value, and they will make me a better person, even if I end up failing.”
Brandon Sanderson
Before we explore and review the three key strategies to help with doing difficult things, let us analyse survivorship bias and the relationships between doing difficult things, success and failure.
Survivorship bias
This isn’t the first bias I’ve written about, you can read about ‘Understanding and overcoming decision-making biases’ from Vol. 003 of Decide.
So what is Survivorship bias? CFI define it as the following, ‘Survivorship bias is a type of sample selection bias that occurs when a data set only considers “surviving” or existing observations and fails to consider observations that already ceased to exist.’
This hypothetical pattern of damage of surviving aircraft shows locations where they can sustain damage and still return home. If the aircraft was reinforced in the most commonly hit areas, this would be a result of survivorship bias because crucial data from fatally damaged planes was being ignored; those hit in other places did not survive.
Brandon talks about when doing difficult things and we succeed, we don’t how much weight to put against luck, talent and effort. So we might look at someone successful and say, ‘Wow they are really lucky or talented or they worked so hard.’
However, we actually don’t know how much each of those aspects played a role in the success.
So it’s useful to reflect on the survivorship bias when viewing successful results and think what am I missing here?
Brandon Sanderson’s 3 tips for successfully doing difficult things:
Tip 1 – Make goals that you have control over
Having emerged victorious in a story writing contest during his high school years, Brandon’s ambition to embark on a path of professional novel writing took root.
He devoted himself to crafting thirteen consecutive novels before finally achieving a sale. In retrospect, he deems his initial goal as flawed, since its realisation relied on factors beyond his direct control.
A wiser approach would have been to prioritise the completion of a specific quantity of novels, each surpassing its predecessor in quality, irrespective of their commercial success or personal fame.
Like with the Decide newsletters, I won’t be able to control exactly how many people read this volume but what I can control is putting in the effort to write it, trying my best to make it better than Vol. 017 and sharing advice that helps make better decisions. I can control those points.
Tip 2 – Learn how you work
Yes, it’s great to study other people and learn from how they work, trying out different tips and tricks (like this newsletter for example) but Brandon emphasises the importance of understanding your own work process and how it applies to any goals you have in life.
For example, he dislikes the notion that being a writer is only for those with an overwhelming compulsion to write, suggesting that it is damaging and untrue.
Instead, he encourages individuals to find what motivates them personally, whether it’s external factors like carrots, sticks or deadlines, or internal strategies such as gamification (the practice of making activities more like games in order to make them more interesting or enjoyable).
If you don’t know how you work best then try a load of different ways and see.
The key is to discover what makes you do the things you want to do.
I appreciate how he makes the point that you are human so don’t feel bad when you’re struggling to do difficult tasks, that is completely natural for most of us.
Research, writing, editing and publishing this newsletter for the past 18 weeks has been really difficult and challenging at times, but having a process and seeing someone else succeed lets me know it’s possible, not easy, but possible.
Shout out to Justin Welsh for all that he shares, if you want to build a world-class newsletter check out his latest newsletter, he is 59 newsletters ahead of me, but I’m catching up ;)
Tip 3 – Break it down
How does Brandon Sanderson write a book that is 460,000 words long? Word by word by word.
“Setting goals and achieving them is often more about breaking that goal into small manageable pieces than it is about simply sitting down and doing something big something great something hard, wonderful but you’ve got to be on that journey you’ve got to figure out what about that journey you’re going to enjoy and how you can have little successes along the way toward what you want to do.”
Brandon Sanderson
‘Just do it’ is good advice but not complete, what exactly should you be doing? Brandon suggests better advice would be to find a pathway that you can follow whether it’s one that you have created or borrowed from someone else.
I love that he argues that society judges our effort and work by saying if we aren’t able to sell or monetise what we are doing, especially difficult things, then it has no intrinsic value.
He believes the opposite, doing difficult things in and of itself has great intrinsic value.
I have a goal to write a weekly newsletter that takes around 5 minutes to read, how do I do that? Well I’ve broken it down, I’ve followed Justin’s process from above and I sit down to write word by word by word.
Next Steps:
Deciding to do difficult things is a powerful choice that can shape your life in extraordinary ways.
By understanding survivorship bias and following these three tips you can do the things you’ve always wanted to do:
- make goals that you have control over
- learn how you work
- break it down
Don’t let the allure of easy success deceive you; the path to greatness often requires perseverance, resilience, and a willingness to face challenges head-on.
Now, I challenge you to reflect on an area of your life where you’ve been hesitating to take on a difficult task.
Take inspiration from what we’ve explored today, and make a conscious decision to embark on that journey.
Trust in your abilities, embrace the discomfort, and allow yourself to grow.
Remember, the decision is yours to make.
Finally, thank you Cal and Brandon for sharing your wisdom with us all.
Enjoy the rest of your Wednesday, and I’ll see you next week.
Ty
