Structured Struggle: Why doing hard things matters.

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever,"— Lance Armstrong and Eric Thomas

Hey everyone,

Welcome to my Curious Ideas! I share weekly insights on productivity, purpose, technology, innovation, and venture building, all shaped by my experiences across Africa and beyond. Each edition dives into one key topic, curates thought-provoking resources, and highlights tools to help you navigate an ever-changing world.

My goal is to provide you with actionable insights and inspiration to navigate an ever-changing world.

Thank you for joining me on this ride. Let’s get to it!

In Today's email:

• The Big Idea: Why I am choosing to do hard things (and why you should too!)

• My Musings: More of my thoughts, ideas and opinions.

• Resource of the Week: Obsidian: A tool that’s helping me apply structure to complex problems.

The Big Idea: Choosing to do hard things!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I had started on a PhD and many of the reactions I got were along the lines of… “But TK, a PhD is hard and there isn’t that much money in pursuing an academic career!” Both of these things are unfortunately true. So why do this then? Surely there are easier ways of learning new skills and moving from being a “generalist” to a “specialist!“

The truth is, I found myself drawn back to the structured and rigorous scholarly process of learning. I know from experience that there is a real sense of accomplishment when you make it through a difficult process, it is that challenging and gruesome process that makes the end-result even more worth it. As a man of many ideas, I knew that pursuing a PhD, focusing one one aspect of one idea for three (or more) years would be difficult. Choosing not to chase every new idea and perspective being even more challenging, but this is the discipline that I know I need if I want to succeed in the next phase of my career, my next decade’s mission. So yes, I chose to unlock this new skill the hard way.

Lets face it, life is already hard, why on earth should we go and intentionally seek out hard things? The pursuit of “the soft life” is the talk of my generation, it seems to have become the primary focus of many and the yardstick through which success is measured. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against convenience and finding things that make life easier, I just think that those things are meant to free up space and capacity for us to do more.

Why does doing hard things matter matter?

Many have written on this very issue. One of my favorite authors, Cal Newport wrote about how difficult work often leads to deep mastery and the satisfaction of having accomplished something significant. Aristotle spoke of how overcoming challenges shapes how we see ourselves, how we view the world and how others see us. Doing hard things helps us to grow because growth comes from discomfort (Carol Dweck (Mindset), Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow)). It is apparent that a lot of people who are much smarter than I am have written on this topic, so I found myself reflecting on why this matters to me. Here are my reasons for wanting to do hard things.

1. Learning to accomplish the hard things we choose, prepares us for the ones that are thrust upon us by life.

   Whether you like it or not, life will throw hard things at you, it is just a fact of our existence. Whether those curve balls flatten you or whether you will have the ability recover, to get up and try again all depends on how resilient you are and how much grit you have. By choosing to do hard things, you develop the grit and resilience to face the unexpected. It is like vaccinating yourself against the unknown, unexpected but inevitable. It is all about developing muscle memory in a controlled environment, so that you will instinctively know how to react and handle the unexpected.

2. The IKEA effect

   It is the idea that the more effort a person expends in creating or doing something, the more that they tend to value it, even if the final outcome isn’t perfect. Put simply, we value what we work for. Its like how the $100.00 that you worked for is way more valuable than the $100.00 that your friend gave you. They are both one hundred dollars, and yet they are not equal in value. You tend to plan for the money your earned, you budget and use it more prudently (You wouldn't just blow it.) I think that a purposeful life is built through deliberate (and sometimes hard) actions, and so it is necessary to do hard things.

3.  Seeking out the best version of myself
   On my deathbed (assuming we don’t crack immortality or uploaded intelligence by then,) I want to look back on my life and be confident that I did my very best, that I became the ultimate version of myself. The only way that I can hope to achieve this, is by choosing to do increasingly less comfortable things. It is by reaching beyond my comfort level and pushing myself. I want to unlock the skills, wisdom and wealth that was planted within me, to live out my ideas and not spend my days fantasizing about them. Don’t you?

What this means

• Trying to do hard things, means being comfortable with failing at those things. Like an athlete attempting to beat a record, it requires that we find value and inspiration in the attempt, just as much as in the accomplishment.

• It also means we have to learn to face the fear that comes with trying to do hard things. A wise person told me once, that being brave isn’t about not having fear, it is about being afraid, but choosing to do the thing anyway.

• It is at the core of our existence that we contend with challenges and doing hard things, whether by choice or by force. Let us embrace modern day conveniences as tools that allows to achieve more with our lives, whatever that “more” looks like for you.

Explore more of my Insights, Articles, and Ideas

I write and share my ideas on a couple of blogs and newsletters that are curated for specific audiences. You can check these out below!

This week’s shiny thing: Obsidian

In the last issue, I talked about Miro, a versatile tool for visual brainstorming. My challenge comes after the brainstorming, when I have many different notes and pages about different things, spread across apps, pages and sticky notes. I use Obsidian to capture and organize all of these thoughts and ideas. Obsidian is a connected note-taking app that helps me map and link ideas as they evolve.

Why it works for me:

• Obsidian is free and is self-hosted, meaning that is exists on my computer, so I don’t have to pay subscriptions or cloud services fees to access my own ideas. Back-linking my different notes helps me to unearth hidden relationships between my craziest ideas.

• It allows me to back-link notes and connect related notes together which helps to surface hidden relationships between concepts.

• The Graph views help me see patterns emerging in my research and across my connected notes.

• If need be, you can sync your notes across different devices, there are free and paid ways of achieving this.

I use Obsidian to build my second brain. If you are navigating complex ideas or long-term projects, Obsidian is worth exploring. I know this whole idea of a “Second Brain“ is both fascinating and confusing, so if you are interested, I am offering a couple of slots to do short (15 - 20 min) demos of how I am using this. Just book a discovery call with me using the button below:

Closing Thoughts

My biggest fear is that, in pursuing the ease (and avoiding hard things like the plague,) we are losing our ability (and desire) to complete hard but meaningful - character defining things. I see it in how we are becoming reliant on generative Artificial Intelligence. It definitely is easier to prompt a Large Language Model and tell it what you are trying to say in an email, than it is to actually sit down and write the email yourself. Writing, like most cognitive skills, is like a muscle. It atrophies if it is not used, worked regularly, and pushed to new extremes. In increasingly prompting through work and life, are we not losing that ability to write? To express ourselves succinctly and communicate effectively? I love AI, I think that, when used properly, it can help us achieve great things!

Thank you for reading. If you found this valuable, share it with someone who might benefit from it. See you next week!

Stay curious,
Takunda (TK) Chingonzo