How Things Become Hard

This is a piece I wanted to write for a long time, in a full form. This will be its baby form, and in part inspired by a recent conversation with a friend.

Sometimes the difference between the easy version of a thing and a hard version is in the details.

Say your friend asks you to pick up a desert for their party. No problem. Now they say that the specific desert has to be both vegan and gluten-free please. This is now a much harder problem because the number of stores that is en route from yours to theirs that has deserts that contain neither eggs nor flour is….much lower. And you might be clever enough to narrow it down to “Ice cream” and think that actually a big store like Target probably has something that fits the criteria from being such a big and diverse store…but now you have to be smart, and not just agreeable to complete this favor. And if your friend isn’t actually responsive to their phone because they are getting ready for their party then you’re on your own about being smart. Probably some sorbet from the Target freezer section will work. Then again, you might not be passing a “Huge Store” either as those are generally only in certain parts of town given how huge they are…

This is just meant to be an introductory example for how something that is pretty easy can easily become pretty hard.

Often something seen as pretty easy can become very hard by either increasing parameters for success, or constraining either information or resources.

In the above example, parameters are increased (success criteria), and both information (exactly what the person might like) and resources (stores that contain the needed item) are constrained.

Usually for these things, I either do them myself, or when I delegate them I try to make it as easy as possible. “Hey can you get me at Talenti Raspberry Sorbet from Target, Walmart, or Whole Foods?” (Ostensibly also I would have a model around how convenient it is likely to be for them, and what hedges I want to put around the ask.)

What else makes things hard?

Things are a lot harder when people are tired. “Hey can you drop this off at the storage unit” becoming “Hey can you also find the speakers in the storage unit and bring them over to my friend’s house” can actually become a much harder ask if the person is very tired or is not great with weights (in the case that this is a large 6-part speaker set, the storage unit is very full, and you have to both find, excavate, and carry all the parts of the speakers).

The thing is, people like doing things for people, like to be chill about “small favors,” or want to seem dependable when they’ve been asked to do something and said yes, to do the variation of the errand that actually will be most useful to everybody.

Resentment builds up though when the ask is seen to be “easy” but actually it ended up being hard.

What else makes things hard?

Energetic mismatch. You go over to somebody’s house. They really want to get very drunk, you don’t. You have to navigate this. This navigation can be much, much more energetically draining than expected, such that there are generally pretty big social rules around not doing substances around people who aren’t into doing it with you at that time.