t just dawned on me that many of us have it backwards.
We make the wrong things easy.
And the right things too hard.
A friend offered to give me a lift on her way to the supermarket.
She was going that way. I was heading that way too.
I said,
“Walking IS the point.”
Not everything that can be done easier should be.
Getting your steps in?
That’s the “hard” we should keep.
I often tell my clients: incentivise your walking. Attach it to errands. Create reasons to leave the house. If your life doesn’t demand movement, design it in.
But take another goal: eating healthy meals.
Here, ease wins.
The less thinking.
The fewer decisions.
The more prepared the fridge.
The more automatic the outcome is - more healthy meals eaten.
If you want yourself — or your team — to do deep work, think hard, innovate… make it easy to do the hard thing.
Block the calendar.
Create protected time.
Build accountability.
Design special spaces.
Give fun tools.
Make the right behaviour the default.
But if you want people to build collaboration skills, trust, or have better conversations - keep that hard.
Don’t automate interpersonal growth.
Don’t shortcut the discomfort of getting out there and talking to people.
Don’t replace real dialogue with digital convenience.
There’s something close to a universal law here:
What shapes you must stretch you.
You only really learn a skill when you need it to survive something. When we go through hard sh*t - that's where we REALLY learn.
You don’t get better at sales because referrals keep landing in your lap, or you are lucky, or you have a good network.
You get better, when you have to sell cold. From zero. No safety net.
Once you can do that, you’re free. You can create results anywhere.
Neuroscience tells us something similar about learning.
If we struggle to retrieve an answer, wrestle with a concept, search for a solution — it sticks.
If we outsource all thinking to AI — it doesn’t. YOU do not change and learn.
Another “hard” worth keeping.
Over to you, dear reader, think of how you want to develop yourself, your craft, your life, and ask yourself,
What is the hard I need to keep to shape that person?
Where do I need to introduce ease to make the right things happen consistently?