If It Were Easy, It Would Already Be Done

So many things are easy to do. Yet, somehow they’re not done.

One reason might be priority. Since those things are easy, we prioritize the hard ones. Thinking to ourselves, “That’s easy. I can do it any time.” Yet, there they sit. Continuously deprioritized and never done.

Another reason might be laziness. I just don’t feel like it. So we don’t.

But before we dismiss laziness as the reason, it’s worth a second-level analysis. Maybe what we’re calling laziness is really the first one — priority. The easy-to-do thing hasn’t risen high enough on the priority list, including “Lay on the couch.”

Another reason might be that it seems easy, but it’s actually not. We talk about how easy it is. Others corroborate. It seems easy because each of the parts or steps in the process seems easy. But sometimes we confuse “known” or “well understood” with easy.

That one’s the trap.

It’s the trap for the organization, and it’s the trap for you. Just because a piece of it’s easy, or the steps are known, or that a small version of it is easy, doesn’t mean the real thing is easy.

Known or understood is not the same as easy. An easily built prototype is not the same as a customer-worthy production version. An easily sent email is not the same as a useful document. An easily sent slack message is not the same as an in-person conversation.

Because what we realize is that if it were easy, it would already be done.