If it's easy, it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.
“Thank you to everyone for following along as we celebrate our X million downloads of the podcast! It’s been an incredible ten years…..”
RECORD SCREECH. WAIT. WHAT?
Ten years? You mean that just because I started following you a year ago, you didn’t just start this last year? You’ve been building this for a DECADE?
This caption was on a recent Instagram story by Sarah Landry @thebirdspapaya. I read it a few times. I may have even walked away, cleaned my glasses, and checked again.
It hit me like a truck and cliches and platitudes came flying at me…
“don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides”
“people see the floating duck, not the legs kicking furiously under the water”
“it takes ten years to become an overnight success.”
As someone who rolls their eyes at “it takes ten years to become an overnight success” (because a) success isn’t guaranteed, b) success is not just about how much time you spend slogging away, and c) I don’t want it to take that long for me) for some reason, for the first time, this felt different.
Because she makes it look easy.
Successful podcast, backed by Dear Media, check.
Millions of people know her name and talk about her and cheer her on, check. (yes, I know people are monsters and hate on her too).
Invited to speak/host big deal events, check.
Cool brands wanting to work with her, check.
Note: I do not aspire to influencer/lifestylist life. Our goals are different, our purpose is different. But goddamn I have a hard time believing that her little duck legs are furiously paddling under the surface because it looks so damn easy.
Maybe it looks easy, or maybe it is easy.
Maybe that’s okay.
My partner says that the sign of a good playlist is when you can’t tell when the music changes. The playlist is on and the songs keep changing, but there isn’t that abruptness between songs, or a noticeable “oh, this song” (often because it doesn’t fit).
And maybe it took her ten years to build her version of this playlist. She had draft after draft of these songs, sometimes disjointed, sometimes made people look up and wonder “where the fuck did this song come from?” but for all of that, there is a seamlessness that she has now in the work she creates and publishes.
We have to talk about EASY. I think easy has a bad reputation,
I know I’ve thought that easy is somehow less valuable.
Looking easy and being easy are different. This we know for sure.
As someone who has worn “hard” as a badge of honour, who isn’t scared of hard, who recites “I can do hard things” (Glennon Doyle writes about this), and who weeps when Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own recites to Geena Davis as Dottie Hinson “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great”, when things feel or are easy, I’ve assumed that something is off.
If it feels easy, am I doing it wrong?
If it’s easy, is it time for a change?
If it’s easy, I’m not being challenged – time to up the ante.
If it’s easy, have I outgrown this?
Can other people tell that it’s easy? Do they think I’m phoning it in if it isn’t a slog?
(Queue a-ha moment)
What if EASY is the goal?
What if everything you’ve been doing over the last X number of years all contributes to things being easier? What if EASY is a good thing, not a failure, or a laziness? What if EASY is a culmination of all the things you’ve learned and practice and tried and failed at? Is that so bad?
In late 2021, I feel like I cracked the business code by asking myself and my clients these three questions:
How can you do this in less time and make more money?
How can you do more of what you’re really good at (the easy things!) AND get paid for them?
How can you create a life that isn’t all about doing hard things all the time?
Answering these questions isn’t easy (irony noted). But when you start thinking about how to get what you want with the fewest number of obstacles, the challenge is no longer about the technical work, it’s about the strategy and the plan, and about assembling your playlist that appears seamless.
To tie this up in a bow, what Sarah @thebirdspapaya creates may look easy. That doesn’t mean it is…but it doesn’t mean it isn’t. And what she creates, writes, and posts is of no less value to her followers, listeners, and loyal fans if her work is hard or easy, or what the last ten years have looked like for her as she builds her platform.
And the same goes for us “not yet famous, but impatiently working towards it because ten years feels too long”. There is no shame in something feeling or being easy. There is also no award for doing something the hard way.
So while I’ll keep my Tom Hanks quote hung in my office, and not be afraid of hard, I am also not going to seek out the hard things for the sake of it. I’m going to seek out some ‘easy’ and remind myself that doing something easy isn’t inherently good or bad or lazy, and doing something hard isn’t more valuable or admirable.