What if your “hard task” is actually 17 easy tasks squished together? (TLDR; this is another of my ‘tiny moment turned to a worldview’ reframes).
I’m new to playing the NY Times ‘Pips’ game, so the other day I was talking about it at a volunteering event and someone overheard us. Their comment has been stuck in my brain: “I never even try the hard level!”
Never even try it? Never?
I didn’t dig in with them, but now I’m stuck trying to understand why. Why do some of us try hard things and others avoid, avoid, avoid?
Is the packaging? The word ‘hard’ is scary compared to nice words like soft and easy and simple.
Is it that we tried and failed (once)? I can appreciate that failing is uncomfortable. Probably more uncomfortable for some of us than others….
Does trying and succeeding come at too great a cost? In this situation, it’s a game meant to give you dopamine hits. If hard takes 5x as long as easy or medium, it’s not fun anymore.
So as I usually do, I take a thought like this and expand it to a worldview: how many things in life are like this?
…please stop here if you’ve labeled me an overthinker. none of this matters and it only gets worse 🙂
So many “hard” tasks in business (choosing a platform, setting your pricing, writing a landing page, building a social media presence, setting up email) are actually just a bunch of tiny, doable steps glued together.
But when you connect those steps too tightly, your brain sees one giant, intimidating blob instead of the individual parts.
No one wants to tackle the intimidating blob.
Under the microscope that blob is one headline, one graphic, three feature blocks, four testimonials, and a button. Maybe a video you’re feeling ambitious.
None of those things are hard.
Next time something feels hard, look closely and decide: is this actually hard or have I just built it up to my own personal intimidating blob.
Then go play Pips on hard mode. Crush it. And realize you can crush anything.
