The Only Road to Success: Doing Hard Things

Reading time: 4 minutes

Have you ever struggled to learn something new just to give up because it got too hard?

Today, I want to share with you some helpful tips to overcome the challenges of doing hard things.

It could be anything like playing guitar, speaking in front of others, cooking, staying consistent with going to the gym, or even [insert what you are trying to do here]

Here are 3 simple steps for doing hard things:

1. Make better goals

2. Learn how you work

3. Break it down

That’s the sauce, you can start on your own now. But if you want to learn more, keep reading.

When things get hard, that’s when you are growing.

Before we dive deeper, I want to say, the process of learning new things sucks. Back when I started my coding journey, man sitting down and read code was a pain in the a$$, nothing was making sense.

I remember watching tutorials and code along to build a to-do list app

• I replicated every line of code, but got a bunch of errors

• Fixed those errors, got new ones

• Finally, got the code to work, but couldn’t understand why

Your journey will be somewhat similar, regardless of what you are trying to do.

And that’s okay. Keep sticking to the plan and oh boy the result is so rewarding!

Alright, let’s get into the real juice 🍹 

1. Make Better Goals

Let’s say you want to be a successful pianist, that should NOT be your goal when you don’t even know why some keys are black and some are white. You don’t want our goals to be overwhelming, out of reach, that can paralyzes you to take action.

What you want your goal to be:

• Smaller

• Within your control

• More realistic

Using the pianist example, your goal should be getting familiar with the piano, which key is which, why are there so many keys. Once you are comfortable, set a new goal to master a particular piece of music (within your skill level, of course). Then you can move on to more specific technical skills like finger dexterity or sight-reading.

I can’t play a piano, but that’s how I would tackle it like that.

2. Learn How You Work

There is a misconception about how “real writers” always have an irresistible compulsion to write, they can sit down and words will flow on to the papers. Writing is hard, and it takes considerable effort to figure out what can help them write and generate ideas.

You think hackers just hop on their laptop and start writing scripts non-stop like in the movie?

Here is how to know yourself better:

• Track how much you can achieve in a day

• Figure out a time that works for you (no distractions, fresh mind)

• Find an environment where you can dedicate to do such activity (for me it’s my beautiful desk setup in a quiet room)

These are the fundamentals that can affect heavily on the ability of how we focus and learn. In other words, it establishes scheduling philosophies and rituals to ease you into deep work.

Still good? Alrighty!

3. Break It Down

I can’t stress enough the importance of breaking your large goals/tasks into a smaller chewable size.

Let’s take cleaning your house as an example, oh boy the thought of cleaning the entire house already break me. It seems daunting and overwhelming, right?

What if we start with one room at a time, today we’ll clean the kitchen. And then we keep breaking that down further.

Big Goals: Clean the entire House

- Kitchen
  - Do dishes
  - Sween the floor
  - Clean countertops
  - Taking out the trash

- Bedroom
  - [smaller task]
  - [smaller task]

- Living Room
  - [smaller task]
  - [smaller task]

- Attic
....

The real challenges lie in identifying these smaller goals. But they become :

• More manageable

• Less intimidating

• More achievable

That’s it! Remember these 3 things:

1. Make better goals

2. Learn how you work

3. Break it down

By doing hard things, you're going to get value out of it no matter what actually happens.

Awesome! Now go out there and tackle what you’ve always wanted to do.

If you like this article and haven’t subscribed, I challenge you to do that (It’s a hard thing to do, I know 🤣)

Thank you for being a special friend!

Justin Nguyen