The world is complex, random, and ambiguous. I like it where there is a process I can repeat with things I know that work, and will stay the same. I am not afraid of hard. What gets me down is wasted time. Fake work and indecision.
When I have faith that I can just chip away at something, the disempowering anxiety that comes with “not knowing what to do” calms down.
One of my passions is language learning. I can still only really speak English, but I am following the process of Fluent Forever (Gabriel Wyner) to train my ear and mouth muscles on lots of different languages. Not an easy task. What I like is that in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, it is unlikely that there aren’t going to be people who speak those languages. The effort will have been worth it.
There are certain difficult things you can put the effort in on, where the unknowns are limited. One of the best competitive advantages is choosing things that are hard (in very simple effort terms), boring, or take a lot of time. Language learning is a great example. Breaking out of our mother tongue is incredibly challenging... yet lots of people do it.
There are advantages that even if you do in the open, and tell people how to do what you are doing, it will take time and application for others to catch up. “People tend to overestimate what they can achieve in a year, and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade”.
Long-term plans you have to chip away at can be significantly more sustainable than quick wins that burn bright and fade out.
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