Do Hard Things Study Guide — What It Actually Is and How to Use It
The term "Do Hard Things Study Guide" doesn't refer to one universally recognized product. It comes up in a few different contexts depending on who you ask. On the high school and college prep side, it often refers to materials tied to the book Do Hard Things: A Revolutionary Approach to Courage in a Culture of Kindness by Alex and Brett Harris. That book is about teen courage and taking meaningful action, and the associated study guide is meant to help students work through the material in a group or classroom setting. On a completely different track, some people use "do hard things" as a shorthand for a study philosophy — the idea that your most effective learning happens when you deliberately tackle the material you find hardest, not the stuff that makes you feel productive. That mindset overlaps with concepts like deliberate practice, interleaving, and retrieval-based testing. People who write about this angle sometimes bundle it under a "study guide" label, even though it's more of a method than a product.
Do Hard Things Study Guide
If you're looking for the actual published study guide connected to the Harris book, it's available through standard retailers and church/small group distributors. The guide typically includes discussion questions, reflection prompts, and action challenges for each chapter. It was designed for youth groups, ministry settings, and some classrooms. If your goal is just personal reading, you can skip the guide and do the chapter reflections yourself — the core content is in the book. Here's what I found working with it in practice. The study guide works well if you have a facilitator who keeps people honest about the action steps. Without that, it tends to turn into a conversation session where everyone agrees and nothing changes. The action challenges in particular — things like reaching out to someone you've been avoiding conflict with, or committing to a concrete week of service — are where the method actually lands. The discussion questions are fine but generic. I'd prioritize doing the challenges over discussing the questions. One edge case I ran into: the study guide assumes a Christian worldview context. If you're using it in a secular classroom or with a mixed-belief group, some of the framing around courage and identity won't translate cleanly. The workaround I used was to strip the faith-specific language and reframe the challenges around secular values — personal integrity, standing up for something, building resilience. The structure still holds. It loses some of its internal logic but the exercises remain usable.
On the study-method angle — the "do the hard stuff first" approach — here's the practical version. Most students waste 60 to 70 percent of their study time on easy material. They re-read notes, highlight textbooks, watch lecture videos passively. That feels like work. It isn't. The hard version is closing the book and forcing yourself to recall what you just read. It's uncomfortable. That discomfort is the signal that learning is happening. Two counter-intuitive things most beginners miss. First, difficulty in the moment does not equal effectiveness in the long run. If your study session feels smooth, you probably aren't retaining much. Second, interleaving — mixing different types of problems in one session — feels worse than blocking (doing one type at a time) but produces measurably better results on tests taken days later. The feeling of frustration during interleaved practice is the actual mechanism working, not a sign you're doing it wrong. The biggest bottleneck with any "do hard things" approach is that it requires honest self-assessment. Most people overestimate what they know. The workaround is simple: after studying a section, write down everything you can recall from memory before opening your notes. Whatever you missed is what you actually need to study. This takes about two extra minutes per session and cuts review time significantly over a semester. I started doing this for my own courses and went from marking 15 hours of weekly study to about six with better outcomes.
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Where this breaks down: if you're behind on foundational material, telling yourself to "do the hard things" just means grinding through confusion without support. In that case, the better move is to go back and fill the gaps first — even if it feels like a step backward. Hard things only work when you have the basics in place. Telling a student who can't do basic algebra to tackle calculus-style problems won't build resilience. It'll build panic. If you want a downloadable study guide for the Harris book, check the official Do Hard Things website or major booksellers. For the study-method version, there's no single document to download — it's a set of techniques you apply to whatever material you're learning. The closest thing to a structured guide is the learning science literature on retrieval practice and spaced repetition, which you can find through OpenLearn, the Learning Scientists blog, or standard college academic support centers.
