“Will power is like a muscle that depletes when it is exercised. Similarly, our ability to make high-quality decisions becomes fatigued over the course of the day. The more decisions you make, the lower quality they become -the weaker your will power. Consequently, you need to do the hard stuff first thing in the morning. The important stuff. If you don’t, it simply will not get done. By the end of your day, you’ll be exhausted, you’ll be
fried . There will be a million reasons to just start tomorrow. And you will start tomorrow, which is never.”—Ben Hardy, 8 Things Every Person Should Do Before8AM
I recently encountered the above quote after about three weeks of intense soul examination, trying to understand my need for distraction and procrastination. What the writer touches on is that phenomenon of working “busy” but not “smart,” meaning not getting the hard things accomplished because you are applying too much of your time and energy on the easy work. Hard work is not so much that work you find challenging to do but more the work you find challenging to start or undertake.
Most of us work at something or other, even if it’s keeping our environment clean or servicing our obligations to others. When we first contemplate accomplishing our life’s work—fulfilling our purpose on the planet—that is when the houseplants get re-watered, the shelves dusted, the CDs categorized, the refrigerator hosed out, etc. All of this was on the to-do list, mind you, but it also qualifies as time-wasting busy work.
By the time we are ready to sit down and write a chapter of that novel or finish a homework assignment or make the hard phone call to a deadbeat client, we aren’t as full of steam as we were first thing in the morning. This same writer’s list of eight things that you should do before 8 AM every day concludes with “#8. Do something to move you forward…every day…before 8 AM.” I think it’s very good advice.
Just …do…it. Doing the hard stuff is like entering icy cold water. If you slowly ease in, it is painful and you will probably talk yourself out of it before you are fully immersed. Just…dive…in.
Deepening this Truth:
- Do not think too much about the action you are going to take.
- Jump in and let the moment define itself.
- We are much more adept at improvisation than we can possibly imagine.
- If I had to choose between the fear of not being fully prepared in a situation and the spectre of having serial unfulfilled goals I think I’d prefer the former.