If you are seeking outsized returns, it can be helpful to look beyond the easy wins and spend more time with the difficult work in valuable areas, because difficulty often acts as a quiet filter that reduces crowding, sharpens your skills, and gradually builds a moat around what you do.
Easy paths tend to produce perceivably linear gains, while hard paths more often compound, and this is why so much of the upside in any field accrues to the few who persist with problems that genuinely matter.
Rather than chasing every opportunity, consider choosing an arena where the outcome clearly matters to customers, patients, users, or a market you understand, then look for the sticking point that most people avoid and learn the bottleneck skill that unblocks value.
When you stack strengths that complement each other, protect your downside with sensible rules on risk and recovery, and keep returning to the work with steady intent, you create conditions in which your learning and reputation begin to reinforce one another.
Progress on the path of most resistance rarely feels dramatic at first; deliberate practice, honest feedback, and public accountability can be uncomfortable, yet they teach faster than comfort ever will, and over time they tend to produce trust, referrals, pricing power, and opportunities that do not appear through casual browsing.
Choosing hard things is not about hardship for its own sake but about placing yourself where the effort truly counts and where each step you take today quietly multiplies tomorrow’s possibilities.