Easy and Hard activity routines

There are two types of activities in our routines:

• Easy: Tranquil activities
• Hard: Challenging activities

Typically, easy routines allow you to stay at your level, but hard routines are required to make progress.

If you're pursuing an activity, it's much better to have an easy routine than no routine.

And you gotta balance having enough hard routines to make progress in your activities, but not so many that you drop your routines.

Does it get any easier? Yes.

There's this successful venture capital investor who's invested in my previous two startups. I've been to a few board meetings with him, and one time, we were talking about our challenges as we grew, even if we were doing well. Suddenly, he blurted:

"Remember, Dui: As the company grows, it only gets harder!"

That advice really hit me because it was so counter-intuitive. I was hoping that with more customers, more revenue, more employees, everything would get easier, not harder!

I nodded to his advice, deferring to him, but honestly, I didn't really get it. I didn't expect it to keep getting harder. I'd be better, my team would be better, and it'd have to get easier. But he had a long and successful track record, and the odds were definitely in his favor.

Spoiler alert: He was right – it does get harder. But the reason is that you just keep trying to do harder and harder things.

It's obvious in hindsight, but counter-intuitive nonetheless:

• The more you can do, the easier it is to do a specific activity.
• The harder things are, the more challenging they are to do with your current capacity.
• How hard things are is a function of what you can do and how hard things are.

The reason it only gets harder as the company grows is that even though you're increasing your capacity to do things, the challenges the company faces increase at a higher rate.

Companies, particularly venture-backed ones, are built to keep doing harder things. First, you're trying to get your first 5 customers. Now, you're trying to get to $1M ARR. Then, $10M. After that, $100M.

If you approach a startup at $10M ARR and ask, "Hey, can you make $1M ARR?" they'll be stumped. "What do you mean? Of course I can make $1M ARR! Obviously." – Solving problems gets much, much easier the more capacity you build.

Things get much, much easier.. as long as you're doing the same thing.

The challenge, of course, is that you're not trying to do what you've already done.

You're trying to do more.

The joy of hard

There's this secret that only experts know: It's a lot more fun to do things when you're an expert, even when they're much harder.

You see, when you are a beginner, you may be under the illusion that it will get much easier once you're better: you'll easily nail that guitar solo, crush your BJJ training partners without breaking a sweat, that the code will flow through your fingers.. easy!

That's all kinda true, actually. Except that by then, you'll be playing much harder solos, facing harder opponents, and writing harder code. And doing it with your higher skill level will still be much harder than doing the easy thing back when you started.. and also more fun.

It's true that if you then go back to playing that simple guitar solo again, face that beginner opponent, or write a fizzbuzz code problem, it'll be easy. Trivially easy. But these very easy activities will typically just not be a part of your life enough to really matter, though.

You know the "2-pound biceps curl" person at the gym? When people start at the gym, they're not strong enough to lift heavy weights, and haven't trained form, so they have to curl 2 pounds in 4 sets of 12 reps.

Compare the 2-pound biceps curl with the hobbyist deadlifting 1.5x, 2x, or more of their body weight. The deadlift is hard. Really hard. And it gets harder the stronger you are as long as you increase your weight.

But you'll never find a bored serious hobbyist deadlifting, like you do those people walking on the treadmill while on Instagram or Tik-Tok on their phones.

So I know what you're thinking now: "OK, I'll just start making progress and take on harder and harder routines! Thanks Dui! Yaaaaaaaaa!!"

But the problem with taking on a lot of hard work is that, well, it's hard. And we are more likely to fail at hard things.

And failing is much worse than sustaining.

Easy activities make it sustainable

Another parallel to strength training:

Likewise, trying to increase the weight faster than prescribed by the program and by common sense is also failure to follow the program. If you insist on attempting unrealistic increases between workouts, it is your fault when progress does not occur. Ambition is useful, greed is not.

Rippetoe, Mark. Starting Strength (p. 622). The Aasgaard Company. Kindle Edition.

I use "ambition is useful, greed is not" as the motto for "make things as hard as you can – but not harder."

If you keep failing, then I have news for you: it's too hard! Stop!

Knock it down a few notches. Make it easier.

When things are working out, they look as if everything is moving along, some slow, some fast. This means keep the pace, or increase slightly.

When things are not working out, they look as if some things are moving forward, but other things are constantly stopping and being restarted. This means lower the pace until they start working out again.

We have many responsibilities, many things that need to keep going. Like in physics, the friction coefficient is much higher for starting than to keep moving. So keeping things moving, at any pace, is the first priority.

Honestly, I can take some of my own advice here: I frequently toe this line between ambitious and greedy. On the guitar for example, my practice is currently a mix of highly focused sessions followed by hiatus, where instead I want it to be a consistent set of easier sessions. Something for me to work on.

Having only hard activities is almost by definition too hard, no matter what we're talking about: areas at your work, your home responsibilities, your hobbies, the areas you want to study. Creating gaps through failures only exacerbates the problem.

Instead, build a solid foundation of easy things. Have only easy activities you can easily do. Make it sustainable.

Then, crank up some of them a few notches to make them grow... and become more fun.

Applying easy and hard activities

First step: Accept not everything is gonna improve at once.

"Everything is hard" is too hard. Make some of it easy.

Second step: Define easy. What can you do sustainably?

For work, it may be just ensure there are clear goals and 1-1s, or it may be just ensuring you're finishing your work but not saying yes to new projects.

For life, it may be going to the gym only for a 30-minute walk or noodling on the guitar instead.

You must be able to do all the easy things sustainably, indefinitely.

Third step: Choose the hard things.

For work, it may be finally addressing that change of process, hiring that leader, or building that roadmap. It's the most strategic activities that will give you the highest leverage.

For life, it may be focusing on reading every night, or writing every day, or taking those language classes.

You must have enough hard things you can pursue without frequent failure.

Fourth step: Re-evaluate if there are too many failures.

For work, if the management is falling through the cracks, then you gotta go back to simple 1-1s and drop some hard things to keep everything moving.

For life, if you're reading every night but not making it to the gym every day, it's time to reconsider what is easy reading and nail that first.

By clarifying what easy and hard look like, you can ensure you have a solid foundation of easy activities while being able to dedicate yourself to making progress on the most important, hard activities.