Question to identify leverage:

What would this look like if it were easy?

I first came across this question from Tim Ferriss, whose early writing had a unique propensity to make me think deeply about my life and decisions.

One of my biggest strengths is that I am a grinder. I really take pride in my ability to put my head down, punch the clock, and grind through anything.

I'm willing to bet that many of you embrace a similar identity. It's a common thread among high achievers.

The problem: While it feels like a strength, being a grinder can quite easily become a weakness.

When we embrace difficulty to a fault, we may come to convince ourselves that difficult is good and that things should always be hard.

But difficulty for the sake of difficulty isn't necessarily good for anyone.

"What would this look like if it were easy?" is a useful question to ask regularly when faced with tasks that we have begun to think of as default difficult.

Is there a higher leverage, more efficient way to approach this? What might I be able to spend more time on if I find an easier way to do this?

What I've found is that by asking the question, and forcing myself to pause to think about it, I do occasionally find an easier, higher leverage, more efficient path.

So the next time you are defaulting into the difficult, pause and ask:

What would this look like if it were easy?

Quote on comfort and truth:

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair." - C.S. Lewis

Easy now, hard later.

Hard now, easy later.

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Framework for the power of shining your light:

The Wind & The Sun

Paraphrasing a popular Aesop's fable that I think about often:

One day, the Wind and the Sun were having a debate over who was stronger. They agree to settle their argument by putting their strength to the test.

They see a man walking down the road wearing a large coat and agree that the first one to make the man take off his coat will be the winner.

The Wind begins to blow with all of his strength in an attempt to rip the coat off the man. The harder the Wind blew, the more the man seemed to cling on to his coat, burrowing himself in it further.

The Wind quickly grew tired of the effort and stopped to give the Sun a turn.

The Sun begins to shine its light upon the man in the coat. The light shines down on the man, who begins to feel the warmth and break into a sweat. Feeling increasingly warm, he takes off his coat to continue his walk in comfort.

The moral of the fable: Kindness, warmth, and gentle persuasion is often much more effective than strength and force.

A classic instance where this moral comes into play:

You cannot change someone through brute force. You cannot force your values or principles onto someone else and expect them to embrace them as their own. When you try to change someone by force, you act as the Wind.

Alternatively, you may change someone if you gently allow your values and principles to shine through in your daily actions and behaviors. When you shine your light into the world and allow that to have its impact, you act as the Sun.

This ties closely to the most impactful relationship advice I've heard:

Write down a list of all of the values and principles you want to find in another person, then go out and actually embody them yourself.

Always be the Sun.​

Tweet thread of incredible book openers:

Really neat thread with a bunch of incredible creative inspiration. I love threads like this that surface something I never would have thought about or come across.

Article on the power of free time:

​The Advantage of Being a Little Underemployed​

Great essay from Morgan Housel on a topic I muse on often. I recently wrote about the value of finding free time to think in my piece on the Think Day.

This is so important. Free time is a call option on future interesting opportunities. When you have it built into your schedule, you uncover gold in the most unexpected places.