My Lumix G9 sits on the top shelf in my office. It didn’t always sit up there. It used to be on the desk — right in front of me, right where I’d see it every time I sat down to work.
Then I moved it up to the shelf.
I told myself it was about space. About keeping the desk clear. But if I’m being honest with you — and that’s the only way I know how to write — the truth is I moved it up there so I didn’t have to look at what I wasn’t doing.
I have everything I need for my podcast and for the video marketing I’ve been planning to do for the College Planning Center. The camera. The microphones. The software. The computer. All of it. Sitting there, ready. And for months I have walked past it, sat down at my desk, opened my laptop, and done everything except the one thing that actually needed to happen.
I hid in my writing instead.
I’m telling you this not because I’m proud of it, but because I know I’m not alone. And I know that every student reading this — and every parent — has a camera on a shelf somewhere. A gym membership they’re paying for and not using. A class they know they should take but keep avoiding. A teacher they need to talk to but haven’t. A study group they should join but won’t.
We are all, in our own way, moving the camera to a higher shelf.
The easy tasks keep us busy. The hard ones move the needle.
Here’s the thing about the easy tasks: they feel productive. You can spend an entire day doing things that need to be done — answering emails, tidying your workspace, reviewing notes you’ve already reviewed — and feel genuinely tired at the end of it. Busy. Working hard.
But if none of those things were the hard thing, the needle didn’t move.
I see this with students constantly. A student comes to me frustrated — says they don’t understand why their grades aren’t improving when they’re studying so hard. And when we dig into what “studying hard” actually looks like, we find the same pattern every time. They’re doing the easy work. The repetitive stuff. Reading the same notes again. Reviewing what they already know. Staying well inside the boundaries of what they’re comfortable with.
They’re not going to talk to the teacher they’re afraid to approach. They’re not getting into the study group that makes them feel exposed. They’re not working the problems that actually challenge them. Because those things require something the easy tasks don’t: the willingness to be bad at something in front of other people. The willingness to try and possibly fail.
And that — right there — is the hardest thing there is.
You miss every shot you don’t take
Michael Jordan missed game-winning shots. Plenty of them. He’s talked about it openly — the shots he took at the end of close games that didn’t go in, the moments where he put himself on the line and came up short. But he never stopped taking the shot. Because he understood something that’s easy to say and hard to internalize: you cannot make the ones you don’t attempt.
The same principle applies to everything worth doing. The podcast I’ve been avoiding. The conversation a student needs to have with their professor. The application to the school that feels like a reach. The major that genuinely excites you but terrifies you because you’re not sure you’re good enough for it.
The result of doing the hard thing might be frustrating. It might bring some pain in the short term. It might not work out the way you hoped. But doing it — actually attempting it — is the only way to get better. And not doing it guarantees exactly one outcome.
So that’s it for me. The camera comes back down off the shelf. The podcast starts. I’m done letting my insecurities make decisions for me. I might not be good at it right away. That’s okay. I’ll get better. That’s always been how it works.
Five hard things worth doing right now
What’s the thing you keep saying you’ll get to? The task that keeps sliding to the bottom of the list? Name it. Write it down. Because you can’t do the hard thing until you’re honest about what it is and why you’ve been avoiding it.
This is the single most underused tool in a student’s arsenal. Teachers want to help. Most of them will meet you more than halfway if you show up and ask. The fear of that conversation is almost always worse than the conversation itself.
Reviewing familiar material feels productive and requires almost nothing from you. Sitting with the material you don’t understand — the problems that frustrate you, the concepts that won’t stick — that’s where the actual learning happens. Spend more time there.
Your students are watching how you handle difficulty. When you take on something challenging, admit uncertainty, try something you might fail at — and do it anyway — you teach them more about resilience than any advice you could give them.
The first podcast episode doesn’t have to be great. The first attempt at the hard problem doesn’t have to be right. The first conversation doesn’t have to go perfectly. Permission to be bad at something new is not a lowering of the bar — it’s the only honest way to start.
The hard things are the things worth doing. That’s not a motivational poster. That’s just true. And the students who figure that out — who stop hiding in the easy tasks and start doing the uncomfortable, uncertain, potentially-failing work that actually moves them forward — those are the students who end up with the best stories.
The camera comes down off the shelf today.
What’s yours?
Carpe diem.
Ready to stop hiding in the easy tasks and start building something real? Entering the Arena gives you the full playbook for doing the hard work that actually moves the needle.
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He realized that the things he kept putting off weren’t the unimportant ones — they were the ones that would actually move the needle. The camera on the shelf wasn’t a failure of equipment or knowledge; it was a habit of choosing easy tasks because they felt productive. The lesson was that staying busy isn’t the same as making progress, especially in college planning where parents often fill the week with research that doesn’t change anything.
Easy tasks give immediate feedback — you Google a school, you read a forum thread, you make a list — and it feels like you accomplished something. Hard tasks (real conversations with your teen about what they actually want, calling a financial aid office for a number, drafting a first essay paragraph) don’t feel finished even after an hour. So we default to the things that reward us with a quick sense of completion.
Start with one specific question instead of a general check-in. “How are you feeling about applications?” is a closed door. “What’s the part you’re most worried about?” is an open one. Then listen for twice as long as you talk. The hard conversation isn’t the talking — it’s the willingness to hear an answer you didn’t plan for.
He lists five concrete actions in the post that families tend to delay: having the real conversation with your teen about fit, running the actual aid numbers (not the brochure numbers), drafting the first essay paragraph, calling one admissions office with a specific question, and writing down what your family actually wants from the next four years. Each takes 20 minutes and most families have been avoiding all five.
The families who do the hard work early — honest conversations, real budget numbers, drafted essays in August not November — get better outcomes not because they’re smarter but because they have more time to course-correct. The ones who hide from the hard things until December are making decisions under pressure with no margin. The difference isn’t talent; it’s whether you put the camera back on the desk early enough.
