Persist by choosing your favorite flavor of hard work

Every craft comes with chores. Writers face blank mornings and form rejections. Musicians grind scales. Founders work through tedious bug lists. When you name these costs upfront, you reduce the shock when they arrive. Then you can choose which discomfort you’ll carry and design for it. It’s not masochism; it’s strategy.

Take Aaron, an illustrator who hated cold starts but didn’t mind revisions. He blocked “revision power hours” at 9 a.m. with a good playlist and promised himself a walk afterward. Rejections went on a visible grid near his desk. Each square filled felt like a small win, even when the email said no. A micro‑anecdote: after his 27th rejection, he got a kind note that led to a paid test piece a month later.

Your favorite flavor of hard might be waking early, sending pitches, or doing scales. Bundle that grind into short windows, reward it, and count the reps. Over time you may even feel a strange affection for the work others avoid. That affection is a competitive advantage.

Behaviorally, this is effort bundling and reinforcement. When you tie an unpleasant task to a pleasant one, completion rates rise. Visible logs leverage the commitment effect and turn vague progress into tangible achievements. Framing rejections or failed attempts as rep counts normalizes setbacks and keeps the streak alive. Choosing your ‘hard’ on purpose makes persistence feel less like punishment and more like training.

Write down the unglamorous parts of your craft so nothing surprises you, then circle the tasks you’re most willing to endure. Schedule them in short, predictable blocks and pair each with a small reward so your brain associates grind with something good. Create a simple log where you count reps—submissions, drafts, scales—and watch the grid fill. Treat acceptances or breakthroughs as bonuses while you keep stacking reps. Start by scheduling your first grind block for tomorrow morning.