7 Lessons From 75 Hard (Extended Distillation)

1. Blind Adherence Is Dumb

Chris Williamson's Modern Wisdom podcast does a Christmas special with his friends every year. This time they talked about doing a modified version of 75 Hard.

The takeaway? The original program is unnecessarily extreme for most people, and you're better off customizing habits that actually serve you instead of force-feeding yourself arbitrary challenges.

That clicked for me. Over the last three months, I did my own version of 75 Hard —without the gallon of water a day or trying to cram two workouts into a schedule already stretched thin by a newborn.

I worked on habits that made sense for my life, not some Instagram-friendly discipline challenge.

The problem you’re solving is discipline and consistency, not voluntary hardship.

2. Doing Something Everyday Is Easier Than ‘Most Days’

Anyone who’s ever tried to build a new habit knows this intuitively, but it’s way harder to do something most days than it is to do it every day.

It feels counterintuitive, but sticking to a habit three or four times a week actually takes more willpower.

Why?

Because now you have to decide — Is today the day? Should I push it to tomorrow? Or should I push it to three days from now and hope future me has their life together? Spoiler: Future you is just as lazy.

The mental negotiation is exhausting. If you commit to doing something daily, there’s no decision to make. You just do it. It’s a rule and a non-negotiable.

3. Articulate Your Why

I’m pretty sure it was driving my wife insane that I’d head out for a walk at 9 PM after she went to bed. And to be fair, I never really explained why I was doing it or why now. If you try to make a big change in your life without giving the people closest to you some context, expect pushback.

A client I worked with last month had a great perspective on embracing change. Their approach? You can always say: “yes, things have changed, and they’re better now.”

For me, this change wasn’t just about self-improvement — it was directly tied to having a kid. That’s why now. It mattered to me to build better lifestyle habits for two reasons:

1. So I can stick around for a long time and actually be there for him.

2. So I can model what it looks like to be a good human, father, and husband.

You don’t really teach kids anything, they absorb what they see. If I want him to grow up prioritizing health, responsibility and consistency, then I have to actually live it.

4. Inertia Is A Bitch

This ties right into the last point — momentum is a powerful thing, and a lot of what you do daily is just inertia disguised as decision-making. You’re doing it because you’ve always done it. Changing that means slamming the brakes on years of built-up routine, and that’s not easy.

Diet and exercise are the most obvious examples. If Friday night has always been pizza night, that first Friday without pizza is going to suck. Not just because you miss the pizza, but because you’re breaking a ritual. You’re disrupting how your brain expects things to go.

Biologically, our brains love habits because they conserve energy. Less thinking, more autopilot. But that also means that breaking old habits takes a lot of cognitive effort upfront.

The good news? Once you push through that initial friction, the new habit starts running on autopilot too.

5. Maybe Wait Until June

If you live in the northern hemisphere like I do, please — for the love of all that is good — wait until June 1 to make major life changes.

Temporal landmarks matter. The new year works because it gives us a clean slate — a psychological reset button that helps break inertia. But June 1? That’s just as powerful. The start of summer brings longer days, more energy and fewer excuses.

Trying to overhaul your life while battling seasonal depression or forcing yourself to go for a walk in -20°C and a snowstorm is a recipe for quitting. Or frostbite. Or both. Your environment should work with you, not against you.

Pick a starting line that sets you up to win.

6. Long Form Content > Information Snacks

For the last 3 months, part of my routine has been swapping 75 Hard’s standard “10 pages of nonfiction a day” for something I find more applicable for me — book summaries or long-form podcasts. Basically, a deliberate effort to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of what I consume.

We’ve talked about Lindy content before — how the longevity of an idea is a good filter for what’s worth your time. After 75 days of this experiment, that lesson has only been reinforced: Don’t read or listen to things just because they’re new or trending. More often than not, the more effort that goes into a piece of content, the better the information.

I know that sounds a bit contradictory coming from a newsletter that distills information down, but I do my best to compress the wisdom without losing the fidelity of the original work. I’m the 1.5x audiobook multiplier.

7. I Have A Love Hate Relationship With My Apple Watch

What gets measured gets managed. And, gamifying health metrics has absolutely helped people build better habits. But at this point, if my Apple Watch is dead, I don’t even want to go for a walk because the steps won’t count and I won’t get the satisfaction of closing my exercise ring.

In related news, I might have a problem.

See Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a goal, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Words I Wish I Wrote

Links & Learnings

• Greg McKeown’s 1-2-3 To Do List Method (I’ve adopted this myself)

• Sorry Hunny… “Vegetarianism is causally correlated with negative mental well-being, reflected in an increased risk of depressive symptoms and neuroticism, as well as lower subjective well-being.” (source)

  • Conjecture: I wonder if this has any reverse causation, as in people who are more neurotic have a higher level of empathy for animals causing vegetarianism.

• ChatGPT performs better when you’re polite to it. AI has learned that politeness leads to more productive interactions in human conversations.

Psst… DSTLLD has a podcast now, too. I know — like the world needs another podcast, right? But here’s the thing: if you can tolerate my written rambles, you’ll probably find my in-person yammering… well, moderately tolerable. It’s basically me and a guest chatting about the same offbeat stuff you read here, except now you get to hear me stumble over big words in real time. I’m not saying it’s the greatest thing in the universe (trust me, I’ve listened to it), but if you like DSTLLD, there’s a good chance you won’t hate it. Win-win! Subscribe or follow on your favourite podcast platform:

• Youtube

• Spotify

• Apple

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PHOTW (Parenting hack of the week): If you compare your kid to someone else’s kid you’re gonna have a bad time.