⚒️ TREE 286: How to succeed when everything is easy
One.
On Sunday I applied for a new passport for my daughter. It took five minutes. Remember when that used to be a Whole Event?
When was the last time you paid a household bill? If you are a millennial, you probably never have. Direct Debit is our friend.
Remembered at 9 PM that you need chainsaw safety leggings for tomorrow night’s juggling class? Amazon has you covered.
Sudden urge to tell a celebrity you hate them? Thank you, Twitter!
Everything is easy now. How do you create something special in this environment?
Do hard things.
Example: Little Simz’ album Sometimes I Might be Introvert did not happen because she had some cool software and watched a life hack on Tik Tok.
She came up with the ideas, then drafted and crafted them into an hour’s worth of rhymes. Practiced. Recorded demos. Met with producers. Hired musicians. Got Emma Corrin on board. She did hundreds of hours of work before she got anywhere close to recording the actual songs.
Also she was rapping and releasing music for over a decade before this latest album. A piece of work like Sometimes I Might be Introvert does’t come from nowhere.
Little Simz does the hard things.
It’s the same for everyone that you admire and aspire to be like. They are willing to do the work when it’s hard, even if it’s really hard for a long time.
Two.
‘You want to do hard things? Try raising a human. Kevin is 24. I’m still trying to coax him out of the pouch.’
Three.
Obviously, put on some headphones and listen to the whole album in one go. But if you can’t do that until later, this will do for now.
Two keys to getting the staying power and toughness you need to do hard things:
Do things that you love.
Fall in love with the hard boring parts of doing what you love.
Grow slowly
Jeff