I used to think if something came easy, it wasn't worth doing. Real work had to be hard. That's how I knew it mattered. So I chose the difficult path every time. Complex strategies. Forced processes. Proving I could do it the hard way. Then I realized that I wasn't optimizing for results. I was optimising for struggle. Hard work matters but unnecessary difficulty is just ego. Now I ask myself if I'm solving this the smart way or just the hard way? Sometimes the best solution is simpler than you think. The goal isn't to avoid effort. It's to put effort where it actually counts.