The Hard Part Isn't Knowing What to Do

Ten ideas about building a life that feels like your own, not just getting better at ticking things off a list.

For a long time, I thought about progress mainly in terms of what I could do. Learn a new skill. Build something. Get stronger. Figure out the next challenge.

I still enjoy all of that. There's a particular satisfaction in working at something difficult until it starts to make sense. But my understanding of success has become less about the next achievement and more about the kind of life those achievements are part of.

I moved away from Australia more than two years ago. At the time, leaving felt like losing a lot of friends. Only recently have I started to understand that the relationships weren't gone. I still carry those people with me, in my thoughts and in my heart. They're a phone call or a planned trip away.

The distance is real, and so is the connection. The love stayed. From here, I can create something new.

That experience has influenced how I think about success. I want a life shared with others, genuine connections and interesting experiences wherever I find myself. I also want to keep learning, making things and using my energy well. I don't think those aims need to compete.

In Success Is Inevitable, Thibaut Meurisse explores seventeen principles for making progress towards a meaningful life. Ten of them stand out to me, especially when I think about work, training, relationships and the decisions I make every day.¹

I'm not sure I believe in laws of success. Life doesn't work like a formula. But the ten ideas make a useful starting point for thinking about how we spend our days, why we choose certain goals and what we do when things don't turn out as expected.

The ten ideas, briefly

These aren't ten separate rules I try to follow. I see them more as different sides of three questions. What matters to me? How do I get better at it? How do I respond when life changes?

1. Decide what deserves your attention

Intent, focus and long-term thinking

It's easy to confuse a full day with a useful day.

I notice this especially when working with large language models. They can help me produce a lot in a short time. There are responses to read, ideas to test, code to review and new directions to explore. It can feel as though I've made enormous progress. When I look closely at what actually works, though, I sometimes find that I've been busy without moving the important part of the project forward.

That's one of my frustrations with these tools. The interaction encourages more interaction. One prompt leads to another, and the amount of output can become its own measure of progress. I have to remind myself that the aim isn't to generate more. It's to build something that works well.

The same distinction applies outside software. You can research a fitness programme for hours without training. You can rearrange your calendar without making time for the people you care about. Even personal growth can turn into another way to stay occupied.

Meurisse writes in the introduction to his book:

I like that the definition leaves room for different lives. Right now, the people I share experiences with matter a great deal to me. So does finding ways to make everyday life run more smoothly, and having time to follow my curiosity.

I've become more aware of how easily an hour disappears. A few minutes scrolling social media, checking something I don't need to check, or following a distraction that looked interesting at first. None of it seems like much on its own. Then the day is over, and I haven't had the chance to explore an idea I was genuinely excited about.

Cultivating creative energy is important to me. I don't mean making myself productive every minute. I mean giving myself enough space to think, experiment and make things without constantly interrupting that process.

Maybe tomorrow I spend a little less time on social media. It's a small change. I might barely notice it that day. But over a month, those saved minutes could turn into hours spent doing something I actually care about. That's the kind of long-term thinking I can relate to. Not predicting where I'll be in ten years, just paying attention to the days that will get me there.

2. Learn by doing something real

Mastery and deliberate practice

I've never been especially drawn to learning everything in advance. I prefer to start doing something as soon as I can, then learn as I go. That's when knowledge becomes functional.

There's a difference between knowing a great deal about something and being able to use it. It's possible to become very good at collecting information while rarely putting it to work.

I see this in software development. When I learn a new language or build an app, I make mistakes. Sometimes the problem is my understanding. Sometimes the structure is wrong. I go back, correct things and gradually make the system more coherent. When something I've built finally works like a Swiss watch, the satisfaction is enormous.

The same process has appeared in places I wouldn't have expected. I taught myself to write with my left hand, and now I write better with it than with my right. It wasn't a matter of understanding handwriting in theory. I had to do it, notice what felt awkward and keep practising.

Fitness has given me an even clearer lesson.

From one pull-up to five

Getting my first one-arm pull-up was a major milestone. Later I managed five repetitions, then began working on weighted sets. The movement is still hard. That's part of what I enjoy about it. I can feel the work involved, even after gaining the ability to do it.

But the biggest lesson wasn't simply to push harder.

I used to think getting stronger mostly meant training harder. Injuries made me reconsider that. There were times when I couldn't do the movements I wanted to do, and that was frustrating. But it also led me towards yoga and towards parts of my training I'd barely thought about, like conditioning my wrists and forearms.

Those exercises don't look nearly as impressive as a one-arm pull-up. They don't always feel like progress either. But I came to appreciate how much the smaller movements contribute to the bigger ones. I also became better at recognising when my body needed a break.

Something similar happens when I'm building software. I might be excited to add a new feature, only to realise that I need to spend the afternoon fixing the structure of something I wrote earlier. It's not necessarily the part I want to work on, but the whole system feels better once I've done it.

That's how I understand deliberate practice. You notice what needs attention and spend time on it, even when it's less exciting than the thing you're trying to achieve.³

I still read and learn from other people. I just prefer to try things early, make mistakes and see what the knowledge is actually good for.

3. Consistency doesn't require a perfect day

Consistency and perseverance

I've practised Qigong for more than a year now. It's become an essential part of my life, not another challenge I'm trying to finish.

Some routines eventually stop feeling like separate tasks. They become part of how you organise your day and look after yourself. Qigong has become that kind of practice for me.

That doesn't mean every day goes well.

I have days when I'm not productive, when I feel distracted or when I'd rather escape what I planned to do. I don't see those days as a personal failure. Usually the feeling passes. Having structured routines makes it easier to return the next day without turning one difficult afternoon into a larger story about myself.

The law of consistency makes more sense to me in that light. Consistency isn't proof that you're always motivated. It's having something reliable to return to when motivation changes.

Research on implementation intentions suggests that deciding in advance when and where to act can help people follow through on their plans.⁴ You don't need a complicated system to use that idea. A regular time, a familiar place or a simple sequence can remove some of the decisions that otherwise get in the way.

I've also become more comfortable with days when I don't feel like doing much. Sometimes I'm tired, distracted or just want to escape from everything for a while. Usually it passes. The routines I've built help me come back the next day, without having to make a big deal of the day before.

I don't think every difficult thing needs to be pushed through, though. Some things are worth the effort, like getting through a hard training session or solving a problem in an app I'm building. Other things keep taking time without giving much back. I'm learning to recognise the difference. Sometimes moving on is the more sensible choice.

4. Change the method when you need to

Flexibility and patience

I've never found a single strategy that works in every situation. I'm usually looking for other ways to approach a problem.

At the same time, there's a limit to what we can do at any given moment. We respond with the energy, understanding and capacity we have. I think it's easy to forget that when looking back at choices we wish we'd made differently.

Training taught me to respect those limits. An injury might stop one kind of movement, but it can open the door to another. Working on mobility or a smaller muscle group may seem like a detour until you realise it addresses something you've been overlooking.

When a goal is blocked, I see three reasonable options. Find another way, rethink the goal or let it go.

All three can make sense.

Patience belongs here too, although I don't think patience means doing nothing. It means allowing time for a worthwhile process while remaining honest about whether the process works.

I don't have a neat story in which patience always paid off. The one-arm pull-up took work, building software requires repeated correction, and learning to move differently after injury has its own pace. Those experiences remind me that progress is not always smooth or immediately visible.

The useful balance is to keep showing up while staying willing to change how I do things.

5. Appreciate what remains, then build from there

Attraction and the meaning of success

Of the ten ideas, the law of attraction is the one I'd be most careful about taking literally. I don't believe that thinking about something makes it appear. But what we pay attention to does influence how we experience our lives and which possibilities we notice.

Moving from Australia made that personal.

For a while, I understood the move mainly in terms of what I had lost. I missed friends and the life we'd shared. That feeling was real. But it wasn't the whole picture.

More than two years later, I began to see that those friendships still belonged to my life. Distance had changed the everyday experience of being together, not what those people meant to me. I could miss them and still be grateful for them. I could stay connected and also build a life where I am now.

It's easy to take what we have for granted until something changes. Loss is part of life. What I didn't fully appreciate before is that change doesn't always erase what came before it.

Meurisse makes a related observation:

There's more to a good life than achievement, recognition or the next goal. For me, success has come to mean genuine connections, shared experiences and an interesting life wherever I find myself. I want to keep creating, learning and taking care of the parts of life that make those things possible.

I don't need every area to be perfect before I can appreciate where I am.

What stays with me

I don't think there's a formula that makes success inevitable. Everyone has different circumstances, and even my own idea of a good life has changed over time.

I still enjoy the challenge of learning a new language, building an app that works as I'd imagined, or doing a pull-up that once seemed impossible. That satisfaction is real. But I also think more about how I spend the hours between those moments. Whether I've made time for people, whether I've noticed something interesting, and whether I've left myself enough space to be creative.

I've been wondering what a month might look like with a little less unnecessary scrolling and a little more of that space. Not a thirty-day challenge with boxes to tick. Just being more aware of where my attention goes and seeing what becomes possible. Some days I'll get distracted anyway. That's part of it.

Training has taught me that change isn't always obvious while it's happening. You practise something, make adjustments and sometimes feel like you're getting nowhere. Then one day something that used to be difficult feels a little easier. I'd like to give my creative work that same chance.

Leaving Australia also changed the way I see progress. At first, I thought mostly about the friends and familiar places I'd left behind. It has taken me time to realise that those relationships are still part of my life. I can miss people and remain connected to them. I can appreciate those years and still be curious about the ones ahead.

I don't want to put life on hold while I work towards the next achievement. I want to enjoy the people and experiences I already have, while continuing to learn, build and explore.

The love stayed. And from here, I can create.

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