Every morning I have a short routine that I go through. It includes publishing this post and working through Duolingo a bit, but it also includes a few games. I play Wordle and compete against my wife (and lose 90% of the time) and I also play the geography game Worldle.
I’m pretty good at Worldle, and get a lot of them on the first try, but I notice that if I get one that stumps me I often just bail on it right away which is hurting my best opportunities to actually learn from it.
Working through the hard questions is the best way to learn. In Seth Godin’s classic book “The Dip” he says it very clearly:
“The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand.”
Tackling all of the easy questions and skipping the hard ones is a great way to get 90% done very quickly, but the hard questions contain the gold. If you want to increase your value to others, digging into the hard questions is a great way to do it.
The next time Worldle stumps me, I’ll fight through to the answer and come out a little better on the other side.
