The Long And Hard Way

Whenever I learn or work on anything, I always opt for the long and hard way. I was never like that before.

I hate to wait. So, I always tried taking the easy approach. I would want to learn everything within a day or two, because I didn’t have patience to wait for a long time, nor did I want to choose the hard way when the easy path was lying beside it.

Most people almost always choose the easy path and skip the hard ones. But choosing the hard path provides you with more advantage:

1. Hard path makes you learn properly. Whenever you’re learning the hard way, you’ll have to learn each and every small detail properly. You won’t be able to skip it all. It’s intimidating and sometimes frustrating because you won’t have huge progress compared to other people who are taking the easy way. However, you’ll have all the details and knowledge which they don’t have.
2. It builds self discipline. It takes lots of self discipline to learn the hard way. It’s because something more easy is lying besides you and you chose the hard path. You’ll have to learn to avoid regretting your decision.
3. It will teach you ‘Good things take time’. In other words, it builds patience. We don’t want to wait long for anything. We want instant gratification with everything we do.
4. You will master the basics. When we skip the hard part, we won’t be concerned about the basics. The basics are the foundation of our knowledge of any subject matter. And if you don’t master the basics, your work won’t be effective. So, learning the hard way enables you to master the basics.

Talking about the easy path I could, for example, fake my writing to be great. It can work for sometime, but not in the long run. To get better at anything you need to take it’s natural course. It takes time and hard work.

That’s why I’m writing everyday on my own terms so that I’ll be able to find my inner voice and write better. I’m choosing to take the long and hard way.

Same with programming. You could copy paste code snippets every time you program or you can learn everything the long and hard way.

We often always try and choose the easy path in anything we do. But that only works as a quick fix. So, avoid that and start choosing the long and hard way.