Purpose, Not Difficulty: Rethinking “Do Hard Things”
Reading Time: ~5 mins
We’ve all heard the recommendation to “do hard things” at one point or another. For most of my career, that was the rule I operated with: if something feels hard, it’s probably worth doing. It’s a pretty useful idea because it pushes you past hesitation, builds discipline, and most importantly, doesn’t really require you to think too hard about it. Over time though, I’ve started to question whether difficulty alone is a strong enough reason to commit to something, and Q1 this year forced me to really rethink that mindset.
The Tipping Point
Between starting my MBA at UBC, managing a high-tempo and high-stakes role in emergency management, and taking on additional personal commitments, like completing the Canadian Mental Health Association’s 2,000 push-up challenge in February to support mental health awareness, a cause I’m passionate about, I found myself defaulting to a familiar pattern: take on the challenging option, assume it will be worth it, and figure it out along the way. Turns out, when you overload yourself for the sake of doing hard things without a clear goal or vision that drives these commitments, it really just takes away your energy to contribute in areas which may generate more value. An example would be professional development: on top of the commitments I had mentioned above, I was also working on completing a few additional certifications under the guise of rounding out my skill set, when in reality, it was mostly driven by a desire to improve my signalling to future employers. Coming to that realization was powerful because it allowed me to step back and re-prioritize my immediate goals, and so, the sticky note with the certifications I was aiming to complete moved from my “active” column to my “parked” column (defined as important but intentionally deferred for later) on my Kanban wall. This has allowed me to reinvest my time in areas that mattered immediately, such as building relationships on top of just studying and working, taking time for my mental and physical health, and to quote Olympian Eileen Gu who so eloquently stated, to be “introspective… and spend [more] time in my head… [so that] I can become exactly who I want to be.”
Individually, none of these decisions were wrong. The MBA is a long-term investment; work demands were non-negotiable; and the challenge supported a cause I care about. Altogether though, something became clear: I wasn’t always asking why something was worth doing, I was just assuming that difficulty itself was the justification. While completing hard things can be instantly gratifying, when it is not purpose-aligned, that’s just all it is. Instant gratification is not the same as rewarding, because it ultimately doesn’t add value for your goals.
Rethinking “Do Hard Things”
In my work, I’m used to thinking about decisions through a different lens. In emergency management, you don’t commit resources just because something is complex or demanding. You commit because it serves a defined purpose: reducing risk, protecting critical functions, or improving resilience. The effort is justified by the outcome, not the other way around.
What I started to notice this quarter is how easy it is to lose that discipline outside of structured environments. When something feels hard, it carries an implicit weight because it feels important by default. But that assumption doesn’t always hold: there were moments where the effort was real, the difficulty was high, but the return, whether in learning, impact, or growth, was unclear. An example would be one of my high priority work items I had committed significant effort to, which was operationally complex, but not necessarily advancing the outcomes I had assumed it would. From a distance, it looked like meaningful work because it was difficult and time-consuming, but when I stepped back, the linkage between effort and outcome wasn’t quite where I expected it to be. Although that gap sounds insignificant, it matters in constrained systems, because the real issue is what you’re no longer able to do because of it.
That naturally leads to the question of trade-offs!
One example that stood out was around opportunities I would normally say yes to, particularly youth engagement and university events, which I care about deeply. Over the past few months, I had to turn down a number of chances to speak or support initiatives I would typically prioritize, not because they weren’t worthwhile, but because I had already committed my time and energy elsewhere. This to me was quite disappointing, but also a good wake up call, because my first instinct was “I’m disappointed in myself for not being able to stretch my time a bit more and fit this in my schedule,” and then realizing that it’s probably not the healthiest way to view the issue.
What I eventually realized was that this instinct was based on a flawed assumption, that I should be able to continuously expand my capacity to accommodate anything I care about, and that saying no was somehow a personal shortcoming. In reality, it was a signal that I was evaluating decisions through the wrong lens, where difficulty was being mistaken for purpose, and that I was assuming that anything I cared about was automatically worth making space for.
Reframing it this way made it clearer that the goal isn’t to fit everything in, but to be intentional about what actually deserves space in the first place.
That was the lesson that’s been slowly brewing for me this quarter. It wasn’t a question of good or bad opportunities, but of alignment, timing, and whether they actually served a defined purpose given my constraints. Saying yes to everything, even things that matter, comes with a cost (and I’m sure my classmates can relate to opportunity cost given we just finished economics!) In this case, it meant stepping back from areas that are actually important to me (just like this “quarterly” blog post which is a month overdue…)
So now, before taking something on, I’ve started forcing a clearer answer:
What am I trying to get out of this?
How does this connect to a larger goal or direction?
If this were easy, would I still choose to do it?
That last question in particular is pretty useful when I need to make a snappy decision, because if the answer is no, then the difficulty might be the only thing making it feel worthwhile, and that’s a weak foundation for a decision.
Takeaways
Don’t take this post the wrong way, because I’m definitely not saying to avoid hard things. Some of the most valuable work is inherently difficult, but difficulty should be a byproduct of pursuing something meaningful, not the reason you pursue it in the first place.
If I had to reframe the idea, it would be this: do purposeful things that happen to be hard, not hard things in search of purpose or in hopes that it will fill some void.
It’s a small mindset shift, but it changes how you evaluate opportunities, allocate time, and define progress. That said, for me, this is still a work in progress, but it’s certainly a better filter to operate with!
What About You?
How do you evaluate whether something is worth doing before committing, not just whether you can do it?
Additional Resources
Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters by Richard Rumelt - for a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy - check it out on Indigo
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less by Greg McKeown - how to do less but accomplish more? - check it out on Indigo
The Tail End by Tim Urban - time isn’t just limited, but measurable in ways that make trade-offs harder to ignore
Until next time,
Ryan
