How To Do Hard Things

Eat the spinach first.

5,000 Calories Per Day

When I played football in college, my defensive line coach used to tell us to eat “5,000 calories a day, under 100 grams of fat.”

This was pretty tough to do, and to be honest I rarely actually hit these macro goals, but it was an aspirational goal meant to get our nutrition on point as 18-22 year old kids who were still figuring out how to actualize our potential through exercise and nutrition.

My diet was pretty good towards the end of High School. But eating 5,000 calories was an insane amount of food, with so little fat calories for flavor was daunting.

So I used a strategy to learn anything new: I swallowed the frog first. By 'swallow the frog' I mean I started with the hardest part of the meal first.

Every day for lunch and dinner my meal started with a plain plate of spinach, the worst part of the meal.

When the first plate of your meal is a heaping pile of raw spinach, there’s nowhere to go but up, even if you’re eating shitty dining hall food.

It felt like I was being served a low quality 3-course meal, where each dish was better than the last.

I don’t say all of this to just talk about food (though I could).

Today is January 2, 2025, and I've set a New Year's resolution: wake up at 5:00am every morning and write 250 words per day.

I’ve learned that putting new thoughts on paper (as opposed to simply editing writing you’ve already done) is hard to do.

It’s the spinach of creative writing.

Being in tech sales, the common advice for doing hard things is to “swallow the frog”, or to start your day with the hardest task there is.

30 Minutes to President’s Club recommends making 10 cold calls before you use the restroom in the morning.¹

My plate of spinach is writing 250 words, which is why I am sitting at my desk writing this blog post at 7:15AM before work.

After this, my plate of spinach will be prospecting for new sales.

Whatever you aspire to get better at, figure out the hardest part—your plate of spinach—and eat it first.

Thanks for reading.

— Grant Varner

1. A big shoutout to Armand Farrokh, co-founder of 30 Minutes to Presidents Club, for introducing the "Swallow the Frog" concept. If you're in sales or looking to break into the field, I highly recommend checking them out. Their content will help you achieve sales success, earn more money, and become wealthy. You can read the newsletter on this topic here: Chapter 1 - How to Be a Cold Calling Machine.