Voluntary Hardship - The Voluntary Hardship Series S15E2

<p><span style="font-weight: 300;">This is a throwback to the early days of the podcast. Matt and Scott discuss the concept of voluntary hardship: what is it and how does it refine us?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 300;">Life will undoubtedly present difficulties. This is involuntary hardship. Choosing to go through something difficult, however, seems to provide benefits. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 300;">Essentially, this is delayed gratification: do something hard now to delay the benefit to a future you. Working, working out, saving & investing money, growing food: these all require work now for future benefits. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 300;">Think about what provides you value and what does not? If you’re doing things that deprive you of value, reduce or eliminate these activities. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 300;">One useful framework is using the concepts of urgent & important to create 4 categories of activities. Important activities provide value. Urgent things need to be completed soon.</span></p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 300;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 300;">Not urgent, not important: provide no value-->reduce or eliminate</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 300;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 300;">Urgent, not important: these tend to take up lots of our time-->reduce the time these take up</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 300;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 300;">Not urgent, important: the hardest category to protect; find ways to spend more time doing these</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 300;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 300;">Urgent & important: worthy of your time, but don’t ignore the important things that are not urgent</span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-weight: 300;">As you can see, the important things that are not urgent are the hardest to get done. There is little to no pressure.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 300;">Work seems to be something people have to do. It