Why Battling Convenience Is The Key To Success
If you’re going to succeed, you'd better get ready for a constant and ever-evolving battle, a battle that, although it has nothing to do with what you’re trying to accomplish directly, can still determine whether you succeed or not.
There is no winning this battle, only getting so good at fighting that it no longer gets in the way.
The battle is with convenience, and the odds are completely stacked against you. Companies that basically run the world are doing everything in their power to make you rely on it.
Everything you do, from mundane to heavy-duty, there is a lab or company or research centre trying to make that very thing easier, smarter and less time-consuming.
I know what you’re thinking, “Why is this a bad thing?”, and at first glance, you’d be right. Because not all things that are made easier or more convenient are inherently bad, but when making a meal from scratch is made to feel like too much effort, or when simply doing some exercise seems impossible, you have a problem.
And I believe that’s where we’re all headed, at least, if we refuse to resist, and all because our brains are literally designed to make us want to do the bare minimum.
Convenience sells, and the price is high. So, when a company makes it so that anything we need, from food to clothes, we can get it delivered right to our front doors, we tend to pay for it.
This is why AI has the world in a chokehold: it saves us time, money and effort, the infinity stones of convenience.
This doesn’t mean you should sell your washing machine and start scrubbing your clothes by hand again; it means that you need to be aware of the kind of convenient alternatives that are causing the most damage, and to get good at resisting them.
What Should We Resist?
Before knowing how to fight against convenience, it’s probably useful to know what kind of things to watch out for. What exactly is the difference between a washing machine and a pill that suppresses your hunger? For example.
Well, when something saves you time, effort, and money on something that needs doing, yet doesn’t necessarily provide any added value from actually doing it, it’s probably a safe and smart investment to complete it more conveniently.
Clothes need to be cleaned, but I’m not gaining anything else by scrubbing them by hand; I’m simply losing time. But with something like losing weight, which helps build discipline, patience, consistency, resilience, and the ability to delay gratification, it’s easy to see that it’s not a trade worth making.
*Just an fyi, I'm not talking about the people who medically need to take such medication, only the people who choose it as an easier way to shed weight*
What you gain by selling your washing machine is very little, yet what you gain by losing weight the good old-fashioned way is vast.
This is without considering that the value of improving your health and physique is far more significant than simply washing your clothes. No one is proud of clean clothes, but dieting and working hard for several months is definitely something deserving of pride, and achieving such a thing can spark enough self-belief to try something bigger.
Convenience is great, but when the benefits of removing friction are worth less than what the friction can bring, and when easier means becoming weaker, it might be worth resisting the temptation.
For example, instead of public transport or driving yourself, why not have a chauffeur? It saves the time and frustration of finding parking, and it means you never have to organise transport once you’ve had a glass of wine, which seems quite convenient to me.
Because the money it would take wouldn’t be worth the friction it removes, it’s that simple. It takes the same kind of evaluation to identity whetehr you should resist convenience or not.
Take pulling out your phone every time you’re made to wait in a queue or sit in a waiting room, this simply removes any negative feeling associated with boredom, so no big deal. But, if it meant also having the inability to sit down and watch a good movie with your family, then you might think otherwise.
An argument can be made that that’s exactly what it leads to, and if you no longer have the patience to sit down and watch a movie, what do you actually think you’re going to achieve?
Fast food is convenient, yet it will make you unhealthy and overweight.
AI is convenient, yet it will make you stupid and unable to think for yourself.
Deciding to avoid a hard conversation is convenient, yet it will destroy your relationships.
You have to take what you’re removing and see what it’s doing in the long term, but not only by looking at the benefits, but by identifying the downfalls as well.
Why Resist It?
Still, some people might be thinking “so what”, and if you’re hoping for a life of mediocrity, you’d be correct.
Achieving something worth striving for means doing difficult things, and when there’s a shortcut for almost everything we do, it won’t be long until you’re unable to do anything difficult at all.
This isn’t pointed out and written for people who want ease and to hell with the consequences; this is for the people who want more. It’s for the people who have experienced what it’s like to be mediocre and want to stay as far away from that as they can.
Because it’s we who will be affected the most. We want to remain focused and disciplined, two things that convenience directly threatens.
All it takes is to stop looking at what choosing convenience adds, like saved time or effort, and to instead ask what type of person constantly opting for convenience will create. From there, it gets much easier to fight.
And that’s it, there is no magic formula in fighting this battle, only to get good at identifying the enemy and knowing when to fight back. All it takes then is practice.
If you want to succeed, you’ll need to resist convenience.