The Imperfectionist: What if This Were Easy?
Oliver Burkeman
As I navigate my way through a bit of a writing crunch, I’m re-sharing a piece from two years ago, about a perspective shift regarding the idea of ‘difficulty’ that made a big difference in my approach to work and life in general.
8 Oct 2023
It’s amazing, frankly, which projects end up getting classified as difficult, if you don’t pause to remind yourself they might not be. I’m responsible for a five-year-old’s birthday party this weekend, and I’ve found myself getting all furrow-browed about it. Yet all the evidence suggests that keeping a bunch of five-year-olds entertained for two hours is incredibly easy, provided you’re allowed to use cake, pizza, noisy games with prizes, and balloons with LEDs inside. Approaching this as a daunting challenge isn’t a reflection of any objective facts, but more like a default bad habit, one I can drop the moment that I notice I’m doing it.
Many of us were apparently raised to believe not just that important things can feel difficult (they can!) but that they must feel difficult; that the measure of an accomplishment is how much effort it took. And, moreover, that effort is a measure of self-worth – that if an achievement comes easily to you, you must somehow be cheating, or that you just got lucky.