Do Hard Things

Do Hard Things

Back when I was writing for Bloomberg Opinion, the one piece I wrote that went insanely viral was the one where I took a giant shit on the CFA program. That kept me busy for a couple of months. I’ve never gotten so much hate mail in my entire life, and some of it was personal. I should have expected it. People worked hard to accomplish a goal, and I told them that it was a huge waste of time. Nobody likes to hear that.

I am a big proponent of doing hard things. Even the CFA, but we’ll return to that in a second. I am even a proponent of doing hard things for the sake of doing hard things, because it raises your self-esteem. You set a goal, you work really hard to achieve it, overcoming a bunch of obstacles in the process, and at the end of it, you look back and say, I did that. You do this once, and you do this twice, and you do this dozens and hundreds of times over the course of your life, and that is a life well-lived. It doesn’t have to be a professional achievement. Playing the guitar is hard. If you spend a few thousand hours learning it, and you get passably good at it, that is an achievement. Going back to school is hard. You’re an adult, you’re established in your career, and you find yourself doing homework and sitting in class with a bunch of 24-year-olds, and you jump through a bunch of hoops, and at the end of it, you get a diploma. That is an achievement. Even doing a giant fucking jigsaw puzzle is an achievement. That is probably the best example of doing something hard for its own sake—you get absolutely nothing out of it but the feeling of accomplishing something difficult.

Funny thing about being a newsletter writer and media personality for 15 years is that it gives you some pretty interesting insights into human nature. I find myself constantly at odds with people who have never done hard things. The people who have done hard things—run a hedge fund, for example—generally don’t criticize because they know how hard it is to create something. No, I have run-ins with the types of people who, when faced with a choice between something hard and something easy, took the easy path every time. When you’ve never accomplished anything, when you don’t have that lived experience, when you don’t know what it’s like to build something, it’s easy to be critical. The old saying is that those who criticize the most, contribute the least. It is absolutely true.

I have done many hard things in my life. One that I don’t talk about all that often was trying out for the wrestling team my senior year in high school. Yes, I waited until my senior year of high school to join the wrestling team. And it wasn’t just any wrestling team—my school had won the state championships six years in a row. It was a juggernaut wrestling team. I was pretty much a fatso at that point in my life, and I was trying to get in shape because I would be going to the Coast Guard Academy the following year. The tryouts lasted a week. 100 kids would try out, and the workouts were so hard that typically there would only be 20-30 left at the end of the week. Incredibly, I made the team. I finished with a 4-4 JV record that year, which certainly wasn’t going to get my name on a plaque somewhere, but I did it. The tryouts were hard, but the practices were even harder. Running up and down stairs for hours, puking, it was nuts. And after I accomplished that, the Coast Guard Academy was easy in comparison. Looking back, the four months that I did wresting in high school probably had a bigger positive impact on my life than anything I have ever done. And it was so improbable—fat Mr. Magoo tries out for one of the strongest wrestling teams in the country and makes it. I ended up dropping 27 pounds, by the way.

And then I went to the Coast Guard Academy. Why do this to yourself? I didn’t even like the water! I did it because it was hard. Bill Clinton spoke at my graduation. After we threw our caps in the air, we tumbled into a giant scrum on the field and I found myself face to face with my freshman roommate, who was from West Virginia. We started doing this happy-happy dance on the field, embracing each other. I remember the look on his face. We did it. Four years of bullshit, of isolation, of mental torture, and we made it. I thought at the time that it was the hardest thing I would ever do, but it wasn’t—not by a long shot.

Sometimes doing the hard thing leads to more money. This is often the case—but not always. Sometimes people do hard things for not a lot of money. Sometimes people do hard things for the one-in-a-million shot of making a lot of money—and they don’t. And that is okay, too. There is a DJ/producer that I who calls himself Marsh—real name Tom Marshall. The guy looks like Waldo, with his horizontal-striped shirts and round glasses. He’s got an incredible sound, a melodic mix of deep and progressive, and he is the king of the Anjunadeep label. He tours a lot. If I were to guess, he is probably making a few hundred thousand dollars a year, which is decent, but there are certainly ways to make a lot more money with a lot less work. But he’s the best at what he does, he’s famous (in certain circles), and he’s doing what he loves. I’ve seen him play live before—he sure does look like he’s having fun. It doesn’t look like a job.

Sports are hard. I wrote earlier that I thought marathons were dumb. This is true—but not the first one. You run a marathon, and then you get to say that you ran a marathon for the rest of your life. People do this, and then they put the oval 26.2 sticker on the back of their car, because they are really proud of it. I get it. You did a hard thing, and you’re proud of it. I played racquetball in Myrtle Beach from 2010-2020. I used to hit the piss out of the ball. I ended up placing 3^rd in the top division of the city-wide tournament, right before the start of the pandemic. I was pretty proud of that, but at that point, I had reached the limits of my abilities. People get good at tennis, they get good at golf, they get good at jiu-jitsu, and they are proud of it. Terrific. It’s a lot of work, and remember, nobody has to do this stuff. Likewise, chess is hard. I have a lot of respect for people who are good at chess, because boy, do I suck at chess. Poker is freaking impossible. I had some early success with poker and thought that I might take it more seriously, but it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought.

And sometimes things turn out to be too hard. You do the mental mathematics and you say, well, I am going to put 10,000 hours into this, and this is what I am going to get in return, and you decide that it isn’t worth it. And you might find something enjoyable if you do it avocationally, but if you spent 10,000 hours on it, it wouldn’t be enjoyable. And that’s okay, too. I have done my 10,000 hours on music, and I can tell you that it is a grind, sometimes, and while performing is fun, sometimes the gigs are a bust. There are times when I feel like giving it up, because the work/reward ratio is so low. But it’s good for the soul.

I have my objections to the CFA. First of all, I don’t like credentialism, and second of all, there is no discernible benefit to getting a CFA. It doesn’t really help you get a job, and it doesn’t really help you get paid more. But if I had to write that op-ed all over again, I would say that the CFA is hard, and that hard things are worth doing, and you will feel a big sense of accomplishment when you’re done. I would just rather spend my time doing other things, and that’s a matter of personal preference. But it got people thinking about their motivations for doing the CFA, which is a good thing.

If you find your life unfulfilling, there is a 99% chance it’s because you’re not doing hard things. I don’t care if you’re making quilts. Do something, and try to be the best at it.