Hard things and valuable things

The internet feeds doing its thing again to contrast and nuance ideas for me – I saw these 2 tweets on the same day:

Sometimes I think early 20s ppl nowadays don’t realize that life is supposed to be a struggle. It’s not supposed to be easy. You’ll lose, you’ll fail, you’ll get dumped, you will lose everything, and multiple times. The whole point is that everything valuable is a struggle and that’s why it has its worth. If life wouldn’t be a struggle it wouldn’t be worth anything! – @levelsio

Looking back, seasons of life where I labelled it the good old days were always difficult and challenging. So true.

Do not confuse things that are hard with things that are valuable. Many things in life are hard. Just because you are giving a great effort does not mean you are working toward a great result. Make sure that mountain is worth climbing. – @JamesClear

Yet, what James Clear said here makes perfect sense too.

All valuable things are hard.
Not all hard things are valuable.

This seems to trip up a lot of people.

The way I see it, there’s a 2 x 2 matrix between valuable things and hard things:

Worthless <----> Valuable
Easy <----> Hard

You get 4 combinations:

Valuable–Easy
Valuable–Hard
Worthless–Easy
Worthless–Hard

The first tweet by @levelsio is talking about valuable–hard. Most of the most valuable and important things of life are often hard won. Finding love, sustaining a long and happy marriage, fighting cancer, bringing up a child. Those things aren’t easy at all, but without them, it’s a lesser life.

The second tweet by James Clear is talking about worthless–hard. It’s fools’ gold. Difficult things to achieve, but ultimately not really valuable at all. Like say, going viral on Tiktok haha. It’s hard, and if you go viral you get a few minutes of fame and dopamine rush, but that’s it. Beyond that it doesn’t do much.

Worthless–easy are tolerable since it doesn’t take much effort. But it’s like junk food. Don’t spend too much time there. It isn’t healthy in the long run.

The valuable–easy category feels like a theoretical impossibility. Do such things really exist? Maybe, when in the right context/mindset. A beautiful sunrise, a child’s laughter, warm tea on a cold day, are all valuable and easy… if you see it and have presence of mind to enjoy it. But maybe having that level of awareness is the difficult part in itself, I don’t know.

if you ask me, I’m going for valuable-hard for work and valuable-easy for the rest of life.