Achieve Your Goals! 7 Tips to Make It Easier to Do Hard Things

To achieve our goals sometimes we just have to do hard things.

It’s not always fun, but there are ways to make it easier.

Here’s what I do to ease the struggle:

Break things up into smaller tasks
Schedule it
Reward system
Perspective shifting
“Let it be easy” mentality
Hemingway bridges
Create your perfect environment

Let’s get into it!

This post is about how to make it easier to do hard but necessary things on the way to achieve your goals.

Break things Up into smallER TASKS

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when we’re faced with a big goal.

It can seem like such a vast and insurmountable Thing that we can’t see ourselves ever getting through it all.

That’s when it helps to break the big Thing down into smaller tasks. Small, concrete, achievable tasks.

Because really, achieving something big is only a matter of taking care of many littler things – the individual components of the bigger goal – one by one until the entire Thing is done.

Looking at it this way, in multiple smaller tasks, makes the Thing feel way less overwhelming and so much easier to accomplish.

I like using the To Do Table for this. It’s a visual daily planning system that’s a little more detailed than a standard to-do list. The To-Do table gives you a visual outline of the project and what needs to be done, broken up into little pieces. (Read more about it here!)

Schedule It

When things feel too big to deal with I have the tendency to ignore it.

I know this is bad.

I know the Thing needs to get done, but I really don’t want to do it now, so instead… I’ll just wait until the very last minute and put off the stress of dealing with it until then.

The problem with my “strategy” is that it never works out like this.

What actually ends up happening is that I’m low key stressed the entire time I’m putting the Thing off. Then before I know it the due date is tomorrow. At which point panic will set in and I’ll have a mini crisis and go through a rollercoaster of emotions including stress and fear and shame and anxiety and plough my way through said, dreaded Thing. (Rollercoaster captured perfectly in Tim Urban’s TED Talk about procrastination.)

To avoid this trap, I’ve found it’s really important to set yourself up for success ahead of time and schedule the things you need to do… then commit to doing it when you scheduled it. Whether you feel like doing it or not. It’s about keeping your word to yourself.

(I know it’s not actually that easy… the next section goes deeper into how to actually stick to your schedule.)

Reward System

In Atomic Habits, author James Clear recommends developing a reward system to help you build new habits.

This can be as simple as putting a check mark on your calendar to mark every day you work on your habit or take an action that you scheduled.

This is why I love planners and To Do Tables. You schedule the things you need to do then cross them off your list when they’re done. This acts as a kind of visual progress tracker.

It’s deceptively simple, but this basic internal reward system can be a powerful tool for sticking to your schedule. Take it seriously and hold yourself accountable for doing what you’ve scheduled.

Another approach is to reward yourself with external rewards: treat yourself after you do something hard that’s moved you closer toward your goal.

This might mean getting your nails done after you’ve worked out for a week. Or watching a show after you hit publish on a blog post. Or going out for coffee with a friend after sticking to your monthly budget.

For best results, make sure to reward yourself with something you genuinely love.

Perspective shifting

When you get stuck, overwhelmed, or just generally stressed out, it might be time to shift your perspective.

It’s like focusing a camera. You can zoom in or you can zoom out to change how you see the picture. Depending on how you choose to control the lens – your view of the situation – you’ll see things differently and be able to operate differently.

When you’re feeling overwhelmed, try zooming in. Zooming in helps you focus on the one thing you’re working on and tune everyone else out. All you to think about – all you need to do – is that one thing.

When you find yourself losing momentum, losing your drive and questioning what it’s all for anyway, try zooming out. Zooming out is about seeing the big picture again and reminding yourself of the bigger goal, the point of it all.

“Let it be easy” mentality

I came across the “Let it be easy” mentality from Susie Moore’s book Let It Be Easy: Simple Ways to Stop Stressing and Start Living.

Sometimes things feel hard because we make them hard in our minds. But really, the Thing is neither good nor bad. That’s just an emotional charge we assign to it. It can be done with dread, or not. You have the power to choose one way or the other.

Try imagining for a moment that the Thing isn’t hard. Try adopting the mindset of, “This is easy!” “This isn’t a big deal.” “I can totally do this!”

Even pretending to do something with ease will make it go by more easily than if you were complaining about it the whole time. And if you can find a way to actually find something easy or fun about it, you’ve really done it!

Better yet – how can you make it fun? For example, I listen to music or podcasts while I work. Or if I’m doing manual labor, I make it a game to do the Thing really quickly, or neatly, or efficiently.

The point is, you have a lot of power over how you perceive your situation. Which in turn shapes how you feel, in turn shaping how you approach the task at hand. In other words, you can adopt a “let it be easy” mindset to make it easier for yourself to do hard things.

Hemingway bridges

Big projects often require multiple days or work sessions to get it done. And if you’re like me, it takes some time to get back into the flow of things when you return to your work the next day.

Part of that is getting over the hump of not wanting to do the work. Another part of it is just figuring out where to pick up from your last session’s work. This is where Hemingway Bridges come in handy.

A Hemingway Bridge is a note to your future self communicating where you left off on the day’s work and what you need to do when you come back to it. Ernest Hemingway famously used this technique when writing, hence the name.

Writing this out makes it so much easier for you to pick back up where you left off.

It’s also efficient. By writing yourself the note at the end of your work session, you’re riding on the wave of your current productivity to the benefit of future you.

Just make sure to communicate with yourself clearly. Try not to leave foggy, mysterious notes that you’ll have to decode the next day. Make it clear to yourself what you were thinking so you can jump back into things without any friction.

Create your perfect environment

Where do you work best? Alone, in quiet? In public, surrounded by other people who will see if you slack off? Work where you’ll be most productive.

What time of day do you work best? Early morning? Afternoon? Late at night? Do deep work at your most productive time.

Music on or off? What kind of music? Or perhaps no music, but rather ambient sounds? Set the background noise (or silence) to your preference.

Do you need a beverage, a snack? A warm sweater, or perhaps a blanket? Grab what you need and have it on hand.

Does a cozy candle or special crystal help you feel more grounded, more focused? Arrange your environment accordingly.

And so on.

The point is, you can shape your environment to be the most conducive to your personal work style. Again, make it as frictionless as possible to do what you need to do. This makes working more productive and more fun!

Conclusion

To achieve great things, you’ll have to do hard things.

But remember: the way out is through. And you have quite a lot of control over how you choose to go through the challenges!

Use these tips the next time you find yourself struggling to do something that feels hard. The more you use these tools, the more they might work their way into your natural routine. Soon enough you might not find it difficult at all to do the things you once found hard. You’ve got this!