Doing hard things

I came across this post about “Doing hard things” that I thought I’d copy in full.

When a precocious yet nonconformist teenager asks why they need to learn calculus, what should you say? 

You know they will never use it in adulthood, outside of certain career choices.

You could say, “It’ll help you get into college,” but then they’re left wondering why college cares if you know calculus. And once they’re in college, maybe you could say, “To get a good job,” but why would a potential hirer care how you did in multivariate calculus if your job doesn’t require any knowledge of calculus? 

I was one of these annoying students. I had the capacity to do well in school but never cared to because I never heard a good answer to this line of questioning. I never understood the point of truly learning the material in hard classes that you’re never going to use in the real world, and I assumed I could goof off and do the bare minimum and get away with it.

But I recently realized there is a very good reason to take Calculus. It’s to prove you can do hard things. 

The ability to do hard things is perhaps the most useful ability you can foster in yourself or your children. And proof that you are someone who can do them is one of the most useful assets you can have on your life resume. 

Our self-image is composed of historical evidence of our abilities. The more hard things you push yourself to do, the more competent you will see yourself to be. If you can run marathons or throw double your body weight over your head, the sleep deprivation from a newborn is only a mild irritant. If you can excel at organic chemistry or econometrics, onboarding for a new finance job will be a breeze. 

But if we avoid hard things, anything mildly challenging will seem insurmountable. We’ll cry into TikTok over an errant period at the end of a text message. We’ll see ourselves as incapable of learning new skills, taking on new careers, and escaping bad situations. The proof you can do hard things is one of the most powerful gifts you can give yourself.

My goal with our kids is to avoid lying to them as much as possible. I won’t tell them that calculus is super important or even that grades are super important. The truth is, they aren’t, so long as you have other plans. Calculus is a great way to prove you can do hard things if you have no other proof to show. But if you’re learning programming and building apps in your free time, or winning soccer championships, or writing a novel, then you are doing hard things. Probably harder than Calculus. 

This is also why there’s so much survivorship bias and bad advice in the “C students hire A students” trope. Most C students are not doing other hard things instead of school. They’re just goofing off, so they end up working for the A student.

But some C students are getting C’s because they’re obsessed with other projects. Hard projects. And that obsession with doing hard things lets them blow past their Excellent Sheep peers over time. So if you have a C student who’s obsessed with something hard, you probably don’t have to worry. If they’re getting high and watching TikTok, well… 

I don’t particularly care what grades my kids get once they start school. But I do care that they consistently prove to themselves they can do hard things. If Calculus is how they want to do it, fine, but there are many, many more options.

And if you’re not someone who knows they can do hard things, find a way to prove it to yourself. Build a habit, learn a skill, create something, whatever it is that turns your default stance on challenges from “that seems hard” to “I can figure it out.”

Create proof you can do hard things.

This is a beautiful articulation of an idea that resonated deeply.

I’d argue that this is the single biggest gift you get when you go to good schools and companies – you surround yourself with peers who habitually do hard things.

Flawed framing

I find myself remembering a George Carlin rant about the notion of “saving the planet.” He laments about the natural self centeredness and arrogance evident in the way we frame that idea.

The planet was here long before humans evolved. And it’ll likely be around long after.

As he correctly points out, it isn’t the planet that needs saving. It is us.

While Carlin made a compelling point through his incisive wit, it got me thinking about how our own self centeredness has us framing problems all wrong.

Too often, we attach false narratives and spot patterns that don’t exist.

When in doubt, re-examine the frame.

And, going right back to Carlin’s rant, perhaps we’ll make progress on climate if we focused on a story that involves saving ourselves.

6 things – the Exponential view and optimism

My favorite paid subscription is Azeem Azhar’s Exponential View. There are two parts of this subscription I like best – a collection of charts every Wednesday and a curated list of interesting research/technology articles every Sunday. Here, for example, are links that caught my eye today.

(1) Meta’s open source Large Language Model (LLM) is as good as GPT 3.5.

The availability of a high quality LLM as an open source tool will change the landscape. Again.

(2) The price of polysilicon – a key input in solar modules – is down 78% this year. Solar is going to continue getting cheaper.

(3) We’re still early days in the mass adoption of electric vehicles. Norway, which leads the world, with 21% of its vehicles being electric, has some fascinating data on passenger car fires. ICE/traditional cars were responsible for 35 out of 10,000 passenger car fires. The same number for EVs was 4 – nearly 9x better.

(4) We may finally have a drug that slows down Alzheimers.

(5) Canada trialed a new work permit directly targeting US H1-B holders. They hit their capacity of 10,000 applications in 2 days. #TalentWars.

(6) An energy startup, Fervo Energy, has shared a statement claiming the first every scalable geothermal energy breakthrough.

What I appreciate about this newsletter is that they don’t shy away from talking about the realities of the challenges we face – especially around the nature of the climate crisis. Those realities are hard to ignore at a time when we’re shattering all sorts of heat wave / temperature records.

For example, it is true that Coal consumptions was the highest this year in a while.

But it is also true that coal consumption is plateauing with growth in coal flattening.

However, this isn’t enough. Fossil fuels are still 82% of the world’s energy supply.

But, on the bright side, the rate of growth of renewables powered by solar and wind is amazing to see. And exponential growth will mean significant changes in our mix in the next two decades.

In their words – “Renewable energy is poised to be this engine of growth. It is on a 60-year exponential growth curve. Solar energy, for instance, is growing at the fastest rate ever seen for any energy technology. China’s progress exemplifies this: it is on track to double its wind and solar capacity by 2025, five years ahead of its 2030 target. Renewables are ready for lift-off, and we love that here at Exponential View.”

This explains why I appreciate Azeem and team’s work. They do a good job of both embracing reality while dealing in hope.

And, as these notes above show, there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful and optimistic.

Long term devices

I occasionally see or hear comments about device upgrade cycles. These comments assume our devices are not built to last more than a couple of years.

My experience tells me otherwise. Our iPad is approaching its seventh year anniversary. My personal laptop is a year or two older than that.

Both devices are functioning just fine.

Maybe upgrade cycles are more for us than our devices?

Profound mastery of a basic skill set

“It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.” | Josh Waitzkin

While this is true in any professional field, this is true in life too.

A few skills – grit, gratitude, constructiveness, along them – play a disproportionate role in a well-lived life.

Percentage of choices – privilege indicators

A simple indicator of the amount of privilege in our life is the percentage of choices we get to make that aren’t in the realm of what the average human being gets to contemplate.

Examples of such choices might be – where should I fly for vacation?, should I send my kids to private school?, should I buy a home in that area?, should I be optimizing for work-life balance in my next job?, and so on.

An indicator of the amount of privilege we’ve been fortunate to accumulate is – what percentage of the privilege choices we’re contemplating now were choices we were able to contemplate a decade ago?