“It’s Too Difficult” Is Not an Excuse
If you really cared about something, you’d do it no matter the difficulty. Of course, we all know it’s not that simple. But here’s something we often forget about: you can always make something easier.
There are many valid excuses not to do something. In fact, learning to say no to activities and opportunities is a vital part of productivity and clarity. And in most cases, simply not wanting to do something is a good enough reason.
But there is one thing you cannot use as an excuse to avoid action — difficulty.
A Note on Laziness
This probably won’t come as a surprise to you, but avoiding an activity because it’s difficult is a form of laziness. Being “lazy” generally has a very strong negative connotation, but that’s not necessarily how I’m using the word in this case.
When I was taught programming in my first year at university, my lecturers would often say, proudly, that programmers are a lazy breed. They hoped that we would pick up coding habits that allowed us to do more, faster, with less effort.
Laziness can be invaluable in finding better ways to do things. However, an issue arises when laziness stops you from doing something altogether.
We can make a useful distinction between two types of laziness: strategic and aversive. Strategic laziness is borne out of wanting to do something in a better way. Aversive laziness is borne out of a negative reaction towards doing something in the first place.
Strategic laziness can be observed when you put off a task, such a cleaning your bathroom, because there are things which are more important in the current moment. It’s synonymous with prioritization. This is the type of laziness that my programming lecturers were trying to impart.
Aversive laziness can be avoiding an activity that you want to do, such as a sport, because you think you aren’t good enough. (For me that’s climbing!) It’s synonymous with evasion.
Not doing something because of difficulty is a form of laziness, but so is delegating a task. The difference is that the former is an aversive laziness, borne out of a reaction against failure and effort, while the latter is a forms of strategic laziness — a way to avoid unnecessary work and achieve more with less.
A Better Alternative
If you want to do something, difficulty should not stop you. If you really care, struggle won’t be the end of the road.
Why? Because you can always break something down to simpler components. You can keep doing this until you get to something achievable.
I’m not trying to deny that difficulty is a challenge — I’d be a fool to do so. What I am trying to convince you is that the issue is not with the thing you’re trying to do, but the challenge that it poses. Instead of dropping the activity altogether, you should drop the challenge level.
Here’s an example: If you want to write, but writing a 1000-word blog post each week is difficult, instead of giving up on writing altogether you should try to change the task — write one post per month, make the posts shorter, or write 50 words per day.
We can draw an analogy with reading. Nassim Taleb has said that if you want to read a lot, you should make sure you get bored by a specific book, rather than by the act of reading itself. Similarly, what we find challenging is usually the approach to an activity, rather than the activity itself.
There is always something you can do to make a task more manageable. By the time you break something down enough that it can’t be made any simpler, it’s easy enough that you won’t have any excuse not to do it. You won’t be able to claim that you don’t have enough time or that you don’t know how to do it.
What You Do, Not How
There is an even deeper reason why “it’s difficult” shouldn’t be your excuse. Fundamentally, if you care about doing something deeply, you’d just do it. Difficulty wouldn’t stop you.
You might employ strategic laziness in getting better at doing something, which is great. But if difficulty stops yo in your tracks it might be that you care more about having done something than actually doing it. I think you know where I’m getting with this, and there are enough “focus on the journey, not the destination” posts out there.
Discipline is invaluable, but sometimes it can cloud our judgement. What I can recommend, from personal experience, is to try to notice your reaction to different activities. The things you do despite the difficulty are the ones you can be sure you truly care about.
Of course, there are situational factors that can determine difficulty — your ability, your mood, your energy levels, and ego depletion (the idea that willpower for effortful activity is limited). But if you pay attention to your reactions over the long-term, over many different situations, you will see patterns.
If you regularly think “Ugh, this is so difficult, and I don’t want to do it” you should stop and break that activity down into something manageable. But I would also urge you to ask this question: “If it feels so bad, should I be doing it in the first place?”.
This article has been very vague at times, but I hope it sparked some useful questions from your own experience. I’d love to hear what you think, so feel free to leave a comment or get in touch.
Thank you for investing your attention with me. :)
This article is part 10 of my 50 Bad Articles initiative, where I write 50 crappy articles in 50 days, in an attempt to kickstart my writing journey.
