I was sitting in my garage last Tuesday, staring at a pile of cedar planks and feeling absolutely, 100% defeated. My hands were covered in a fine layer of sawdust, my lower back was starting to thrum with a dull ache, and I had just realized that I’d measured the same board three times and still managed to cut it too short. It’s funny, isn’t it? We live in an age where I could have pulled out my phone, tapped a few buttons, and had a perfectly pre-fabricated bookshelf delivered to my porch by tomorrow morning. It would have been level. It would have been clean. It would have been—dare I say—easy.
But instead, there I was, sweating over a mistake that was entirely my own fault. And for some reason, as I looked at that ruined piece of wood, I wasn’t actually that angry. Frustrated, sure. But there was this strange sense of being present that I hadn’t felt all week at my actual job. It got me thinking about how much we’ve optimized the “friction” out of our lives, and whether or not we’re actually better off for it.
We’re taught that efficiency is the ultimate goal. If you can do something in ten minutes, why take an hour? If a machine can do it better, why do it by hand? It makes sense on paper. But I’m starting to believe that the “hard way”—the slow, manual, often-frustrating way—is actually where the good stuff happens. It’s where we actually inhabit our own lives instead of just scrolling through them.
The Seduction of the “Easy Button”
I get the appeal of convenience. I really do. I’m not some Luddite who wants to go back to washing my clothes in a creek with a rock. But there’s a subtle trap in the modern world: we’ve started to confuse “saving time” with “living better.” We’ve become so used to the instant result that we’ve forgotten how to enjoy the process. When everything is a click away, the result starts to feel a bit… hollow.
Think about a meal. You can grab a microwave dinner and be fed in three minutes. It’s efficient. It checks the box. But compare that to a Sunday afternoon spent making a slow-simmered sauce. You’re chopping onions, the smell of garlic is filling the kitchen, you’re tasting and adjusting the salt. By the time you sit down to eat, you’ve invested something of yourself into that plate. The food hasn’t just appeared; it’s been earned. I think our brains are hardwired to crave that connection between effort and reward. When we skip the effort, the reward doesn’t taste quite as sweet.
We’re losing our tolerance for the “muddle.” You know the muddle? It’s that middle stage of any project where everything looks like a mess, you don’t know if you’re doing it right, and you’re half-convinced you should just give up. In our digital lives, we rarely have to sit in the muddle. If an app doesn’t work, we close it. If a video is boring, we swipe. But in the physical world, the muddle is where you actually learn how things work.
The Language of Material
There is a specific kind of knowledge that only comes through your fingertips. You can watch a hundred videos on how to garden, but you don’t actually know anything until you feel the difference between soil that’s too dry and soil that’s just right. You don’t know wood until you’ve felt the grain resist your plane or seen how it soaks up oil. It’s a tactile language.
Why Your Hands Need to Be Busy
When you’re working with your hands, your brain has to engage in a totally different way. It’s not that abstract, high-level stress we get from answering emails. It’s concrete. It’s spatial. It’s “how do I make this part fit into that part?” It forces a kind of focus that is increasingly rare. I find that when I’m working on something physical, my internal monologue finally shuts up for a few minutes. I’m not worried about my mortgage or my to-do list; I’m just worried about the edge of this chisel.
- Tactile Feedback: Unlike a screen, physical objects give you immediate, honest feedback. If you hit a nail crooked, it bends. There’s no “undo” button, which makes you pay closer attention.
- Sense of Scale: Building something—even something small—reminds you of the physical reality of the world. It’s grounding.
- Physical Memory: Your body remembers how to do things. Years later, you’ll still remember the “heft” of a tool or the rhythm of a specific task.
I think this is why so many of us are suddenly obsessed with things like sourdough, pottery, or restoring old cars. We’re starving for something real. We spend all day moving pixels around, and at the end of the shift, we have nothing to show for it but a sense of exhaustion. But a birdhouse? A knitted scarf? A repaired faucet? That’s something you can touch. It’s proof that you exist and that you can affect the world around you.
Why Failure is the Best Part of the Process
Here’s something people don’t talk about enough: the “hard way” involves a lot of failing. And that’s actually the point. In a world of polished social media feeds, we’ve become terrified of looking like we don’t know what we’re doing. We want to be experts immediately. But when you’re doing something manual, you will mess up. You’ll strip a screw. You’ll kill a plant. You’ll over-salt the soup.
And that’s okay. In fact, it’s more than okay. Those mistakes are the only way you actually build a relationship with a craft. When I messed up that cedar plank, I had to stop and figure out why. Was I rushing? Was my tape measure slipping? Was I not accounting for the width of the saw blade? That moment of troubleshooting taught me more about carpentry than the three hours of successful work that preceded it.
There’s a certain resilience that comes from fixing your own mistakes. It builds a kind of quiet confidence. You start to realize that most things aren’t “broken”—they’re just in need of a different approach. You stop being afraid of the “Check Engine” light or a hole in your favorite sweater. You realize you have the agency to handle it. That’s a powerful feeling to take with you into the rest of your life.
Reclaiming Your Attention Span
Let’s be honest: our attention spans are shot. I find myself reaching for my phone if I have to wait more than thirty seconds for a microwave to finish. It’s a habit. But you can’t “speed run” a garden. You can’t make a piece of furniture go faster by tapping on it. These things take the time they take.
Engaging in a slow hobby is like a workout for your focus. It forces you to stay with one thing for an extended period. At first, it’s agonizing. You’re twitchy. You want to check your notifications. But if you push past that first twenty minutes, something shifts. You enter that “flow state” people always talk about. Time starts to move differently. You look up, and two hours have passed, and you’ve been so absorbed in the work that you forgot to be stressed.
It’s a form of meditation that doesn’t involve sitting still and trying not to think. You’re thinking, but you’re thinking about the work. It’s a focused, productive kind of peace. I’ve found that the more I do this, the better I am at focusing on other things, too. It’s like I’m teaching my brain how to be quiet again.
Finding Your “Analog” Outlet
If you’re feeling burnt out or like your life is just a series of digital chores, I can’t recommend the “hard way” enough. You don’t need to go out and buy a thousand dollars’ worth of woodworking equipment. You don’t need to be “talented.” You just need to be willing to be a beginner.
Maybe it’s cooking one meal from scratch every week. Maybe it’s buying a basic toolkit and finally fixing that loose doorknob that’s been bothering you for years. Maybe it’s just writing a letter by hand instead of sending an email. The scale doesn’t matter as much as the intent. The goal is to reintroduce a little bit of friction into your life. To do something where the process is just as important as the result.
Don’t worry about it being perfect. In fact, the imperfections are what make it yours. My bookshelf is slightly wobbly on the left side, and there’s a visible patch where I had to fill in a gap with wood putty. Every time I walk past it, I don’t see a “failed” project. I see the afternoon I spent learning how to be patient. I see a piece of my own time and effort made manifest.
The Long Road Home
We’re never going to get rid of the conveniences of modern life, and honestly, I don’t think we should. I like my GPS. I like my dishwasher. But I think we need to be careful about letting convenience become the default for everything. We need to carve out little islands of “difficult” work to keep ourselves grounded.
The “hard way” isn’t about being a martyr or proving how tough you are. It’s about being human. It’s about the messy, slow, tactile reality of living in a physical world. So, the next time you have the choice between the easy way and the long way, maybe try the long way. Give yourself permission to be slow. Give yourself permission to mess it up. You might be surprised at how much more satisfying it is to actually do the work yourself.
I finally finished that bookshelf, by the way. It’s not a masterpiece. But it smells like cedar, it holds my books, and it reminds me that I’m still capable of making something real. And that? That’s worth a few short-cut boards and a bit of sawdust in my hair.