Doing hard things for a long time isn't difficult because they're hard or because you have to do them for a long time.

It's difficult because the payoff between effort and reward can be years or decades. When it feels like the reward will never come, we get discouraged and quit.

If you got six-pack abs and looked like Terry Crews after just one workout, you'd go to the gym every day. It wouldn't matter how tired or busy you are; you'd get those bulging biceps because visible progress makes doing hard things easy. Conversely, if you gained twenty pounds after eating ice cream or drinking a few sodas, you'd never have ice cream or soda again.

But that's not how life works. One workout won't make you fit, but a hundred workouts in a row will. One bowl of ice cream won't make you obese, but a hundred bowls in a row will. But what if there were a way to make it seem like one workout made you fit or that just one bowl of ice cream made you gain weight?

There is.

Aside from sheer grit and discipline—which are required—making the long-term results visible in the short term can help you stick to the long, hard path.

If you're trying to stick to working out, don't rely on your physical appearance to keep you motivated because, often, your body is the last thing to change. Instead, buy a digital scale that measures body weight, muscle mass, and fat—and a notebook. Every morning, weigh yourself and write down your stats. Since these numbers change more frequently than your physical appearance, even if they're by small amounts, you'll be encouraged to keep those numbers trending in the right direction.

The same goes for dieting. If you're trying to lose weight and stick to a diet, buying a digital scale can help you track your body weight and fat more minutely. Maybe you don't see any changes after dieting for three weeks, but your body weight is down three pounds. That's a win!

Jerry Seinfeld famously created the "don't break the chain" method. He taught younger comedians that the key to writing great jokes is to write jokes every day. So, he said to buy a yearly wall calendar and every day that they wrote a joke, to draw a big X on it. Their only goal once they started was not to break the chain. This is the same idea. Their goal wasn't to draw Xs on their calendar; it was to be a better comedian, but that takes time. If, in three months, they didn't feel like they were funnier or had more jokes, they could look back at their calendar and see a record of all the jokes they wrote. The Xs made the invisible, visible, and visible progress makes doing hard things easier.

Doing the hard thing isn't hard; it's doing the hard thing for what feels like forever without seeing any results. The more things you can do to decrease the amount of time between "effort" and "reward" by making the invisible progress visible, the easier it will be to do hard things for a long time and increase your odds of success.