Doing Hard Things Will Make You Happy

Easy things are boring.

3 min readSep 1, 2020

We all love doing easy things. Why? The answer lies in the brain. Rather, the brain itself is the answer.

It’s just two percent of our body mass but consumes 25 percent of our energy. That’s why it’s always trying to conserve energy by turning everyday actions into habits, looking for patterns in everything, and so on.

To a large extent, this is useful. If we had to use mental energy to brush our teeth, dress up, eat, walk, and drive, we would have no energy left for work and other important things.

But in its attempt to conserve energy, the brain also resorts to black-and-white thinking, and either shuns deep thinking or outsources it to others.

Here are some examples.

The aspiring writer writes dozens of articles and mass-pitches to publications without caring to gather feedback on her work. The stock trader buys and sells stocks by reading tips from “market experts” and ignores her own due diligence. The employee waits for instructions instead of taking initiative. The news watcher forms opinions based on media reports without checking the accuracy of the “facts.”

Easy actions keep us in the comfort zone. But they make the mind like a piece of steel. Etching something new on it becomes as tedious as erasing what’s there. The mind rejects perceptions that challenge its wisdom and avoids anything that stretches it outside its comfort zone.

This feels good until it catches up with us.

The aspiring writer gives up because her work doesn’t get traction. The trader loses all her money when the stock plunges. The employee struggles to find a job after his skills turn redundant. The news-sharer unintentionally turns into a fake-news peddler and becomes the target of trolls.

Not to mention how boring an easy life becomes. People try to fill this void of boredom with substance abuse, empty sex, or mindless content consumption. And that begins the downward spiral into depression.