66. Making stuff a bit easier

February. Typically a time of year when new year’s resolutions have been put firmly in the bin.

The classic annual cycle, and one that I’m sure we’ve all gone through in our time. 

So, despite us being well aware of this, why does it repeatedly happen? 

The next 4 minutes is going to look at (admittedly, probably incorrectly), exactly that...

First up, I imagine that one issue is that saying we’re going to do stuff makes us feel good. 

Big claims like this year we’re going to run a Marathon, or read a new book every week, or learn a new language, triggers the brain’s reward system.

We get a sense of virtue, and a lovely little hit of dopamine. This feels good, so it’s always a tempting thing to do. 

However, as we know, it’s very easy to say we’re going to do stuff. It’s much harder to actually go and do it. 

The general, and very familiar, process often goes:

Or something like that.

But basically, doing hard things is hard, and therefore unpleasant at times. 

And if we find something consistently unpleasant, then unless we’re some sort of masochist, then we’re probably not going to sustain it in the long term. 

As life gains tend to happen over the long term, if something is unpleasant or unsustainable, then that’s probably a fairly big barrier to achieving whatever it was that we said we were going to.  

And I can’t help but think that this is the main problem when it comes to new years resolutions, or just setting new goals in general. We make things so unnecessarily hard for ourselves. 

I mean, there is literally a new years resolution challenge called ‘75 Hard’. 

Don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but apparently it became big on TikTok.

So, what is it?

According to Google, 75 Hard is “A Tactical Guide to Winning the War with Yourself”. It promises that we can “Transform our life in just 75 days”. It’s the “Ultimate program by Andy Frisella to boost your confidence, self-esteem, and grit.”

Wowza. Big stuff. 

Anyway, if we remove the fluff, it’s basically giving up booze, junk food, and doing multiple workouts a day for 75 days straight. 

Interesting…

Now, not to shit on it… well, actually yes, to shit on it a little bit.

That sounds fucking awful. 

Of course, if the goal is a post-Christmas reset, or some sort of short-term aim like getting in shape for a wedding or holiday, then it’s probably going to be pretty effective. 

However, if we go back to the “life gains tend to happen over the long term” point, then talk about filling your life with unnecessary suffering. 

Forget booze and food, 75 days without a rest day is madness for like 99% of the population. 

I’m using this ‘75 Hard’ thing as a specific example, but I think it’s representative of so many wider types of nutty programmes that are encouraged. 

But I can’t help and feel that results, in whatever area of life it may be, can be more enjoyable, and therefore sustainable, than that. 

A dialling down of the intensity, and a dialling up of the consistency. 

Make it easier, do it for longer.  

This point reminds me of a story from the book ‘Effortless’ by Greg McKeown…

In short, in the 1850s, the great expedition of the time was the race to the South Pole.

There were two teams who believed they could do it. The British, and the Norwegians. Each team had very different approaches. 

The British team's approach was basically: Maximum effort = maximum reward.

Do the most amount of mileage each day, and therefore they’d arrive at the South Pole before the Norwegian team. 

The Norwegian team had a different philosophy. It was: Optimal effort = Maximum reward.

As opposed to doing the most mileage per day, it was to do a sustainable amount of mileage a day.

I suppose it’s the “marathon not a sprint” approach. The tortoise and the hare analogy.

So although the Brits were smashing out 40 mile days at some points, the Norwegians capped each day at 15 miles. 

You can probably guess where this is going…

The Brits won, yay! 

Ha, nah, the Norwegian’s got there first. 

As opposed to going too big and leaving nothing left in the tank, they managed/conserved their energy and won. The consistency over intensity approach.

Slightly extreme example, but I do think analogous to the new year resolution problem. 

Overcommit, burn out. 

It’s probably an overestimation of the impact of doing a lot for a not for a very long amount of time, and an underestimation of the impact of doing a little but for a longer period of time. 

And although there can obviously be short-term benefit to the gung-ho approach, I think the downside is the higher chance of getting demotivated, over it, and binning it off all together. 

So yes, here’s to a year of less glamorous, but more sustainable goals. 

On that, time for my 10 minutes of reading...