I was inspired to write this post because of a story I read in Ali Abdaal’s newsletter that really resonated with me.
Recently I have really struggling to post on this blog and upload to my Youtube channel. I have several half-written posts, pages of research and video footage just waiting to be edited. But I can’t seem to get it over the finish line.
When I think about why this is the case, I keep coming up with the same kinds of answers. “I need to do better research; I need to make a better workflow; I need to focus on improving my writing; I need to script my videos.. etc etc.
Whilst these seem like legitimate reasons – indeed I don’t doubt they could improve my content – they are really just excuses. The things I tell myself so I can avoid the judgement of others.
It’s like I actively make it harder than it needs to be so I have an excuse not to do it!
In Ali’s newsletter, he calls this Heavy Lift Syndrome. It’s when you treat something as a much heavier lift than it needs to be – like treating lifting 20kg like its 100kg. He suggests the reason is that we have made it into a “Big Deal”.
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
-Confucius.
This is definitely the case for me. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, by creating rules around my videos and blogs posts. Rules like – It has to provide value, it has to be well researched and written. And that classic – it has to be good.
In fact, I think it’s a good rule of thumb that if you are creating strict rules around the stuff you want to do, then perhaps you are making it into a ‘Big deal’ and you may fall foul of ‘Heavy Lift syndrome’.
Ali’s suggests using a Tim Ferris’ Trick and ask ourselves :
“what would this look like if it were easy?”
I would also follow up by asking:
“how would I feel if this was done?“
I find linking these two questions to be very powerful. As I come to write to the final part of this post, it is that ‘feeling’ that is keeping me going to the finish line
So what have you been making something harder than it needs to be?
Thanks for reading 🙂
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