Prioritize hard things that are probably good for you

I recently expanded my running journey with three or four 5-mile runs per week.

So far the experience of each run has been very predictable:

• Mile 1 feels easy.
• Friction builds up considerably in miles 2–4. Every few minutes, I ask myself: “how much longer is this going to take?”.
• Mile 5 returns to being easy once again because I know I’m almost at the end.

Interestingly, since beginning this routine I’ve found it easier to work more intensely outside on the gym — whether it’s learning an instrument or making progress on a project at work.

In a Huberman Lab podcast episode, Andrew Huberman shed some light on what mechanisms may be at play here: there’s a part of the brain called Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex (aMCC) that plays a vital role in enabling us to overcome resistance and move forward in difficult tasks. Apparently when we perform exercises that we feel resistance towards doing, communication routes to and from this part of the brain increase.

We’re not just strengthening our bodies, we’re also strengthening our brain’s ability to push through difficulty.

The research and personal-anecdote based wisdom here is seems clear: we should do things that are probably good for us particularly when we don’t want to do them.

When we think of the pursuit of happiness in the conventional sense where we have a frictionless, smooth-sailing experience then this seems like no way to live. But if the goal is be feel fulfilled, I suspect this is precisely how we’d want to approach life.