The self-help industry has done a remarkable job of pushing the masses to do hard things – waking up at 5 AM for yoga, running marathons, trekking mountains, devouring endless non-fiction, and oh, how could I forget – starting a startup.
The rationale is simple – doing hard things prepares you to handle regular things better.
But here’s a counter thought – you don’t have to do the hard thing.
Doing hard things just for the sake of hardship is outright stupid and uninspiring. What’s wrong with facing regular things head-on as they happen? Why do I need to be “prepared” for them? Many of the things we train ourselves for never even happen, which is ridiculous.
If you enjoy the hard thing, by all means, do it. But not because it supposedly equips you for something in the future. That’s just pointless rework – worse, it’s doing work you never even needed to do.
Parth Choudhury 