It is in the places we feel incapable that something gets developed. Discomfort is the home of transformation. Not just physical discomfort, but even that first impression: I don't even understand the nature of the thing before me. As Sonke Ahrens put it: "We have to choose between feeling smarter or becoming smarter".

But that doesn't mean the hard work must be hard to do (to paraphrase my productivity guru, Cal Newport): the process of learning that begins from a place of discomfort need not be "hard to do", in the sense of onerous.

How does a child learn to speak or walk, a seemingly impossible transformation?

Not through some grind.

They have a gift that brings levity - the gift of curiosity. Curiosity makes the seemingly impossible transformations not just inevitable, but prevents the kind of accumulation of psychospiritual detritus that a more uninspired approach necessarily begets.

Let curiosity drive the flywheel of your effort.