{"id":3328,"date":"2014-12-15T14:17:53","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T21:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=3328"},"modified":"2018-06-11T04:33:26","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T11:33:26","slug":"different-difficulty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/15\/different-difficulty\/","title":{"rendered":"Different Kinds of Difficulty"},"content":{"rendered":"

How difficult is it to learn a new language, start a business, or write a book? These are common questions, but unfortunately the answers you\u2019ll get from people aren\u2019t very satisfying. The problem is that the word \u201cdifficulty\u201d is horribly imprecise.<\/p>\n

There are different kinds of difficulty, and although the English language likes to lump them together, they have different causes and solutions. Depending on what kind of difficulty you\u2019re facing, the proper course of action might be to buckle down or despair.<\/p>\n

Luck Difficulty versus Effort Difficulty<\/h2>\n

The first distinction is whether the difficulty depends mostly on effort or not. If something is difficult, but the outcome doesn\u2019t depend much on effort, then it depends on luck. Winning the lottery is difficult, but there\u2019s not really much you can do to increase your chances.<\/p>\n

When people talk about difficulty they confuse these two types all the time. Building a well-read blog is difficult. But it\u2019s mostly effort difficulty and not luck difficulty. Yes\u2014the success of individual articles depends a great deal on luck. But if you\u2019re experimenting constantly and have a patience that spans decades, not weeks, the luck part evens out and it mostly becomes a matter of effort.<\/p>\n

Learning a language is also mostly effort and not luck. Yes, some people are born with a bit more verbal ability in their genes. But the real difference is how many hours you put in.<\/p>\n

One-Time Luck or Ongoing Luck<\/h2>\n

There are different kinds of luck difficulty as well. Some are one-time. I\u2019ll probably never be a successful jockey\u2014my height and weight would make it impossible to compete against the best. That was a bit of genetic luck whose dice have already been rolled.<\/p>\n

Other types of luck are ongoing. Writing a best-selling book depends a lot on luck. But it\u2019s also dice you can roll over and over again. The more you roll, the greater long-run odds you have of writing a bestseller. The greater your horizon for patience is, the more this type of difficulty can be transformed into effort difficulty.<\/p>\n

Vertical Difficulty versus Horizontal Difficulty<\/h2>\n

Vertical difficulty is something that is hard to do, in one go. A one-armed chin-up is vertically difficult. Horizontal difficulty is hard to do, in summation. Walking 100km is horizontally difficult.<\/p>\n

Olle introduces this concept<\/a> with regards to the perceived difficulty of learning Chinese. Correctly pronouncing tones is vertically difficult, but learning vocabulary is horizontally difficult. From my own time studying Chinese, I agree with Olle, that it\u2019s mostly horizontal, not vertical, difficulty.<\/p>\n

Both vertical difficulty and horizontal difficulty reduce down to effort difficulty. Not everyone can do a one-arm chin-up, but if you trained for a couple years, you could probably do it. Similarly, walking 100km (as long as it\u2019s not in one go) is doable by everyone, it just takes a long time.<\/p>\n

The distinction here is that the two difficulties require different mental approaches. Vertical difficulty requires aggressive experimentation and the ability to work hard at a goal for long periods without positive feedback. Horizontal difficulty requires patience and stable habits.<\/p>\n

Probing Difficulty<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s often a good idea to ask someone about the difficulty of a task before you start it, to help you know what to expect. However, as I said in the introduction, that question often doesn\u2019t have a satisfying answer. You can make it better, by asking questions to elicit what type of difficulty you\u2019re facing.<\/p>\n

Here are some questions to figure out whether you\u2019re dealing with luck or effort difficulty:<\/p>\n