PDF Summary:Do Hard Things, by Steve Magness

The way we think about toughness, according to Steve Magness, is all wrong. We traditionally define toughness as a combination of machismo, lack of emotion, and outward displays of dominance and control. But Magness claims that this “old-school” definition of toughness is harmful and that real toughness is defined by confronting reality, acknowledging your thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and using a multitude of strategies to cope with discomfort or adversity. In Do Hard Things, Magness provides a new, more accurate, and more effective way of thinking about toughness, which will help you overcome challenges and make better, more thoughtful decisions.

In this guide, we’ll explore why traditional ideas around toughness are not only ineffective but harmful. Then, we’ll look at Magness’ ideas on what it really means to be resilient, and we’ll provide strategies on how to overcome discomfort and adversity. Throughout the guide, we’ll compare Magness’s ideas and strategies with those of other self-help and psychological experts, helping you become a more thoughtful, versatile, and thus tougher person.

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Control and Codependency in the Workplace

If you have a boss who is overly controlling and robs you of your autonomy, it may be that he or she is codependent. A codependent person is someone who obsesses over another and seeks to control their behavior, and codependency in the workplace can be detrimental to all parties involved. A codependent boss or manager may be over-reliant on their employees for validation and self-worth, and codependent employees may seek constant approval from their bosses. Both of these habits can lead to stressful and unproductive work environments.

Some signs you may have a codependent manager include micromanagement, gossiping about other employees with you, taking credit for your ideas, feeling the need to be involved in every decision, an inability to set or respect boundaries, and a constant need for validation. As an employee, such behaviors from a manager can be stressful and even lead to burnout. It can also cause employees to feel used, decreasing motivation. For a manager, codependency leads to indecisiveness and a fear of criticizing others, both of which affect productivity because a manager must be able to make decisions and provide constructive criticism for a workplace to function properly.

If you feel you have a codependent boss, it can help to try to understand why they’re codependent, as codependent behavior usually comes from past relationships or experiences. If you know why they behave this way, it can make it easier to work with them. Further, try to set boundaries with them. Setting boundaries with a codependent boss can keep you from enabling unhealthy behaviors. Lastly, encourage your boss to seek help from a mental professional, as codependency is a serious issue that often requires therapy to properly deal with.

Here are some tips from Magness on how to maintain control in your life:

Start small: People often feel overwhelmed by the enormity of a challenge. Look to gain a sense of control by breaking down a large task into smaller chunks and tackling the easiest part first.

(Shortform note: In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor claims that people struggle with big challenges because their emotions take over when they start to feel overwhelmed, reducing their ability to make rational decisions. He provides a four-step process to help break down large tasks: 1) Acknowledge your emotions, 2) identify what you can control, 3) pick one small task out of the things you can control, and 4) pick another small task and repeat until the overall goal is complete.)

Leave yourself options: People can leave themselves with few options without realizing it, limiting their own autonomy in a situation. For example, you might tell yourself you must finish a task by the end of the workday. But in doing so, you stress yourself out because you’ve given yourself no other choice than to stay late and finish. Instead, say to yourself, “I’ll try to finish today, but I can get up early and finish tomorrow if I need to.” Simply providing this choice for yourself makes it more likely you’ll complete the task.

(Shortform note: Charles Duhigg provides another way to use choices to maintain control in Smarter Faster Better. He claims that making a subversive choice—one that breaks a rule or is an act of rebellion in some way—can be especially powerful because it reminds you that you don’t have to always follow the rules or listen to others.)

Establish a routine: Magness explains that establishing and following a routine can provide a small sense of control in your day-to-day life. When you perform a routine, like taking a 10-minute walk at the same time during the workday, this can shift your focus from the things you can’t control to the simple task that you can control. This small shift of focus can be enough to avoid spiraling out of control.

(Shortform note: In Indistractable, Nir Eyal provides two tips to consider when making a daily routine or schedule. The first is to consistently reflect on how the schedule is working and make slight adjustments based on your reflection. Your ideal schedule isn’t likely to perfectly match the reality of how you work, so you need to tweak your schedule accordingly. Second, keep in mind that you can only control what you put in, now what comes out. Don’t be stressed when you don’t get the exact outcomes you expect from your daily schedule. Focus on maintaining a routine and putting in the effort. If you do this, eventually, good things will happen.)

Strategy 2: Understand Your Emotions

Another key attribute of a truly tough person is the ability to understand your emotions. Magness claims that emotions protect us; they help us navigate the world. If you suppress your feelings and emotions, you’re suppressing your ability to navigate the world effectively. Old-school toughness tells you that you should listen to some emotions (like joy, pride, or anger) while ignoring others (like sadness or fear). Magness, however, claims that you should try to understand and interpret all of your feelings and emotions so that you can make better choices.

Feelings give us important information that we should listen to, claims Magness. Instead of viewing emotions as things that get in our way, as the old-school version of toughness might advise, we should listen and try to understand what our feelings and emotions are telling us. When you understand why you’re feeling a certain way, you can use that information to make better decisions.

Understanding Toxic Masculinity and Old-School Toughness

The notion that toughness involves suppressing certain emotions is a key component of toxic masculinity, a set of harmful attitudes and beliefs about how men should think and behave. Though Magness doesn’t directly refer to this recently popularized term, he does point out that toughness and masculinity are often conflated, and many of his ideas reflect the discourse around toxic masculinity and how it’s harmful—for instance, the ideas that men should try to appear dominant, control others, and suppress their emotions.

Experts argue that masculinity itself isn’t toxic, it’s just that certain unhealthy manifestations of it are, and the stereotypes toxic masculinity reinforces are harmful to men, women, and society as a whole. For instance, society expects women to be kind, gentle caregivers and men to be tough, unemotional protectors. But men, of course, do have emotions, and many feel the need to suppress them or overcompensate for them to meet these unrealistic standards. Eventually, this can cause them to lash out, leading to violence and prejudiced behaviors.

In most cases, you’re perfectly capable of accurately assessing your feelings and what decisions you should make based on them—if you feel disgusted by the smell of a certain food, you don’t eat it, trusting your feelings to tell you that the food isn’t safe. But in times of stress or adversity, you more often misinterpret your emotions, which can lead to poor decision-making. For example, when you have a stressful day at work, you might be more irritable when you get home and get unreasonably angry at your loved ones.

To better understand your emotions, Magness recommends that you label them. Labeling or putting a name to your emotions is helpful because it helps you interpret them. When we put a name to an emotion, we focus our attention on it, which allows us to examine it more closely. This can help you avoid simply acting on the emotion because as you examine it, you can better understand why you’re acting a certain way. For example, if you had labeled your irritability after a long day at work, you might have been able to put some space between the irritability and the anger that followed and stopped yourself from getting angry at your partner.

How to Label and Express Your Emotions

In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown provides an in-depth look at the many different emotions humans experience—and which Magness says you should label. She argues that understanding your emotions will not only help you make better decisions in times of stress but also form deeper connections. Brown splits emotions into three main categories:

Self-focused emotions: These emotions, which include sadness and shame, help us understand our internal mental states. Sadness is a painful emotion that helps us respond to and accept a personal loss in our lives. Most people are well-acquainted with loss and the feeling of sadness. Another common self-focused emotion, shame, is the feeling that you’re a flawed, inadequate, or bad person. Brown claims that shame is important to acknowledge because ignoring it only makes it stronger.

Externally-focused emotions: Instead of informing us about ourselves, these emotions help us understand our response to our environment. Anxiety, for example, is a concern about the future and our ability to handle it. When we aren’t sure what’s going to happen and fear it might be bad, we feel anxious. Another externally-focused emotion is boredom, which Brown defines as the desire to do something meaningful but not being able to. Boredom occurs when you’re understimulated and unsatisfied with how you’re spending your time.

Relationship-focused emotions: These emotions help us connect with or detach from others. When we feel angry, for example, we’re upset that someone or something thwarted our desires or disrupted the established order of things. Anger makes us want to lash out and sometimes hurt the person who caused the negative emotion. Compassion, on the other hand, is a positive emotion in which we feel empathy for another and try to ease their suffering.

Strategy 3: Listen to Your Inner Voices

Another key aspect of toughness, according to Magness, is learning how to interpret and deal with internal debates. When making a decision, we all have several “voices” in our heads pointing us to a certain behavior. In normal, everyday decisions, like deciding what to wear to work, these voices are calm and collected, helping us make a somewhat easy, unimportant choice. In challenging situations, however, ones that require toughness, there might be several voices competing loudly against each other, pushing you toward different behaviors. Navigating these loud voices and making a decision based on them is much more difficult.

Old-school toughness teaches you to simply ignore the voices that don’t align with your goals, like the voice telling you to give up. Magness writes that instead of ignoring these voices, we should acknowledge and respond to them, as when we consciously recognize our doubts, fears, or other emotions, we can make better decisions.

(Shortform note: While Magness claims that we should acknowledge our inner voices to make the best decisions, some, like Malcolm Gladwell in Blink, argue that this isn’t always the best route. Gladwell claims that sometimes the best way to make a decision is to follow your intuition or, as he puts it, to rely on your “snap judgments.” Snap judgments, or unconscious decisions, can be beneficial because they’re quick and they don’t require too much information. Sometimes, we’re bogged down by too much information—provided by the voices in our heads—and struggle to interpret it correctly. It can be better to let your unconscious mind do the work and make a quick decision.)

According to one school of thought, we developed inner voices as a way to deal with stress. They serve as a way of making our abstract feelings more tangible. When we address our feelings with our inner voices, we can think about them more concretely, which can help us turn feelings into the appropriate actions or inactions. In other words, while our feelings help us navigate the world, our inner voices and thoughts help us navigate our feelings. The key to toughness is learning how to use our inner voices to our benefit and not letting the negative voices win out and lead us to poor decisions.

(Shortform note: Psychologists agree that our conscious thoughts (inner voices) help us regulate our emotions and make more rational and less impulsive decisions. But while language is a vital part of what it means to be human, it also has its downsides when it comes to emotional regulation. Just as language can be distorted and used to deceive or mislead others, our inner voices can distort our feelings and lead us to inappropriate or misinformed actions. For example, in response to upsetting news, you might feel a strong mix of emotions such as anger, guilt, and sadness. But since there is no single word to describe how you’re feeling, you simply label it anger and act angrily.)

According to Magness, there are three strategies we can use to make better use of our inner voices:

Vocalize your thoughts: Putting your thoughts into words can help you focus on the thought you want to be focused on. By vocalizing a thought, you give it more power. Also, since our inner dialogue is often convoluted, vocalizing your thoughts can simplify them and make them more actionable.

(Shortform note: Research has confirmed that talking to yourself can provide several benefits. On top of the benefits Magness mentions, positive self-talk can calm you, improve self-esteem, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. Negative self-talk—when your internal dialogue is too critical or pessimistic—can have the opposite effect. It can cause you to ruminate on negative thoughts, thereby harming your self-image, your confidence, and even your ability to deal with pain.)

Don’t be overly positive: People often try to hype themselves up with positive internal dialogue. According to research, however, this only works if you actually believe what you’re saying to yourself. If you think to yourself, “I can do this,” you aren’t going to trick yourself into believing it. Even when talking to yourself, you have to be realistic.

(Shortform note: Psychologists provide further insight into why being overly positive doesn’t work, claiming that your brain resists big leaps in thought. If you think to yourself, “I’m happy” when you’re feeling really sad, your brain will resist this thought, which might amplify the opposite feeling rather than the one you’re trying to manifest. You might think, “I know I’m not happy. I’m sad and nothing I say to myself will change that.”)

Think in the second or third person: Magness notes that when we engage in internal dialogue, we often think in the first person—“I’ve got this” or “I’m capable.” But research shows that simply thinking “You got this” or “(your name) is capable” can improve your ability to perform. This is because thinking in the second or third person puts space between yourself and the situation, helping you consider it more objectively and make better decisions.

(Shortform note: Thinking in the third person to gain a more objective perspective is a research-backed therapeutic method. Research shows that it not only helps you see things more objectively, it also helps you view yourself with more kindness and compassion. For instance, one study found that when participants recalled negative memories in the third person (for instance, “She had a hard time in high school”), they exhibited less emotional pain and ruminated on the memory for shorter durations.)

Strategy 4: Zoom In or Zoom Out

Magness states that true toughness is about learning to deal with pain or discomfort, whether it be mental, physical, or emotional. This means being flexible—broadening or narrowing your focus depending on the situation. Magness claims that the toughest people—those who can thrive in the face of adversity—know when to shift between a broad and narrow state of mind. On the other hand, the only strategy of old-school toughness is to fight against pain and push through. This approach focuses your attention only on the specific task you’re currently working on.

What a Samurai Warrior Says About Toughness

In The Book of Five Rings, 16th-century Samurai warrior Miyamoto Musashi provides advice on individual combat that echoes Magness’s advice on dealing with life challenges. Musashi argues that maintaining awareness and adaptability is key to successful combat. For instance, he says that knowing your environment (the terrain, enemy positioning, climate) is crucial in maintaining control in a situation. Similarly, Magness claims that understanding your inner and outer environment (reality, your emotions, and your thoughts) is necessary to navigate adversity.

Musashi also claims that you need to adapt your strategy depending on the circumstances. This resembles Magness’s argument that old-school toughness doesn’t work because its only strategy is to keep fighting through the pain without exploring other options. Just as a Samurai warrior needs to shift focus and change strategies to succeed in combat, a truly tough person needs to recognize when something isn’t working and shift focus accordingly to overcome adversity.

Sometimes, Magness points out, narrowing your focus is the best strategy. In times of stress, this is advantageous because it allows you to focus intensely on the task you need to accomplish. But, as we’ve discussed, most people can only do this for so long before their negative thoughts spiral and they give up, panic, or make poor decisions. When narrowing your focus is your only strategy, it limits your options—when your attempt doesn’t work the first time, your only option is to try again. You need to be able to try something different instead of doubling down and wasting your effort.

(Shortform note: In Smarter Faster Better, Charles Duhigg provides a term for this type of over-focusing: cognitive tunneling. He defines cognitive tunneling as a process in which the brain becomes fixated on one stimulus at the expense of everything else. Magness claims that narrowing your focus for too long can lead you to give up. Duhigg, on the other hand, claims that the main harm of cognitive tunneling is when the main object of your focus isn’t the right one. In other words, when we hyperfocus on one task or stimulus, it’s often not the thing we should be focusing on.)

When narrowing your focus fails, when you feel on the verge of giving up or panicking, you must be able to zoom out and take on a new perspective. This approach allows you to take in more information, be more creative, and avoid the pitfalls of narrowing your attention. For instance, if you’re freaking out about an upcoming presentation, it may be better to zoom out and think about how unimportant your presentation is in the grand scheme of things rather than fixate on the presentation or your anxiety. The key, however, according to Magness, is learning when to broaden and narrow and being able to shift your focus and attention at will.

(Shortform note: Another way zooming out may be helpful is in avoiding the illusion of attention, which Rolf Dobelli describes in The Art of Thinking Clearly. The illusion of attention is the human tendency to focus only on the details you feel are important. When focusing, your brain naturally ignores information it deems unnecessary or irrelevant. While this can help you ignore distractions, it can also cause you to miss important information. By zooming out occasionally, you can avoid missing important information your brain chose to ignore.)

Let’s say you're an ambulance driver trying to get a patient to the hospital as fast as you can. When everything is going according to plan, you can zoom in and focus on driving your chosen route as quickly and safely as possible. But if you hit an unexpected traffic jam, you need to zoom out, take in your surroundings, and come up with a new plan. Perhaps you realize you can cut through a parking lot, backtrack a few hundred meters, and take a side road that will get you to your destination quicker.

To improve your focusing abilities, Magness suggests the following exercises:

Narrow and broaden your thoughts: Think of a hypothetical problem—for example, say there’s too much vehicle traffic in your neighborhood, and you want to improve this. Now, think of the most obvious solution to this problem, and make a detailed plan on how you would implement it. Then, zoom out, and instead of coming up with one detailed plan, come up with as many solutions to the problem as you can think of, no matter how ridiculous or impractical they seem. This exercise is meant to improve your ability to solve problems in different ways—first by narrowing your attention and improving concentration, then by broadening it and improving creativity.

(Shortform note: In Learning How to Learn, Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski identify two modes of thinking that correspond with Magness’s narrow and broad thinking. They call them focused thinking and diffuse thinking. In focused thinking mode, brain activity is concentrated in a specific neuronal network, which allows you to pick up on small details. In diffuse thinking mode, brain activity is spread out, which can help you see things differently. The authors argue that alternating between these two modes of thinking can improve problem-solving—first by identifying the problem with focused thinking, then by coming up with a solution with diffuse thinking.)

Zoom in and out visually: This exercise is meant to help you shift between a narrow and broad state of mind using visual cues. Direct your attention to a single object. Zoom in on this object, noticing as many details about it as you can. Then, zoom out, unfocusing your vision so that it’s blurry. Try to not focus on the details of any single object, but instead notice everything around you. You can also use this exercise in times of stress—if you feel yourself becoming overwhelmed by a situation, try to zoom out and broaden your vision to keep your negative thoughts from spiraling.

(Shortform note: Psychologists confirm that where you focus your visual attention has an effect on your mental and emotional states. Psychologist Rick Hanson argues that the brain has two main ways of processing information: the allocentric mode and the egocentric mode. The egocentric mode lets you see things subjectively, up close, and as disparate parts. The allocentric mode gives a more objective view, allowing you to see things as connected and part of a bigger picture. Hanson claims that simply focusing your vision on the horizon can activate allocentric processing in the brain.)