How To Do Hard Things

It's a useful conceptual framework for how to get better at things that you currently find difficult. Everything is hard before it is easy. The day before something is a breakthrough, it's a stupid idea. Doing hard things is mostly about having high expectations for yourself and getting used to being uncomfortable and the way to get started doing something difficult is to dive in.

The Single-Loop System

Useful when you know what success looks like but cannot currently achieve it.

1. Find something that is like the hard thing but is easy.
2. Modify the easy thing so that it is like the hard thing in exactly one way that you find hard.
3. Do the modified thing until it is no longer hard.
4. If you get stuck, do one of the following:
   • Go back to step 3 and pick a different way in which the problem is hard.
   • Recursively apply the general system for learning to do hard things to the thing you're stuck on.
   • Go ask an expert or a rubber duck for advice.
   • If you're still stuck after trying the first three, it's possible that you may have hit some sort of natural difficulty limit and may not be able to make progress.
5. If the original hard thing is now easy, you're done. If not, go back to step 2.

The Double-Loop System

When you don't know what success looks like

1. Apply the single loop system to the problem of improving your understanding of the problem space (e.g. consume lots of examples and learn to distinguish good from bad) in order to acquire a sense of good taste.
2. Apply the single loop system to the problem of doing well according to your own sense of good taste.
3. Get Feedback on the result from others. Do they think you did it well? If yes, great! You're good at the thing. If no, either improve your sense of taste or theirs. If you choose yours, go back to step 1 with the new example. If you choose theirs, apply the single loop system to the hard problem of convincing others that your thing is good.