Easy isn't Always Better, but Hard isn't Always Holier • The Prairie Homestead

Man, do I love efficiency.

I always have.

If I can make something more streamlined, less clunky, and even faster, that’s my love language. And I suppose it’s the love language of our modern world, too.

It can be a beautiful, useful impulse.

Until it isn’t.

After I published my last essay about celebrating humanity in the things we create, someone emailed me about a Bible camp they’d attended, where the curriculum they used was prepackaged videos and scripted lessons. The writer of the email wondered how effective it could truly be and if the kids could find meaning in something that felt so impersonal and canned.

The same day, a friend emailed to tell me about someone they knew who was so excited to discover that AI could edit their book manuscript. My friend shared her sadness at what might be lost when words aren’t shaped and crafted by human hands.

I nodded my head to each of these emails, while also feeling a rumbling sense of uneasiness.

Easy vs. hard.

Human vs. machine.

Meaningful effort vs. wasted time.

The kind of struggle that shapes you vs. the kind of struggle you should be outsourcing.

How do we know the difference? How do we find the balance? Can we have our easy cake and eat it too?

This is a non-stop wrestling match for me. And I’ve come to the conclusion that, once again, two things can be true at once.

This isn’t binary. It’s not “easy good, hard bad,” or vice versa.

I find the question I’m asking these days isn’t whether choosing efficiency is right or wrong, but rather:

Where are shortcuts serving me, and where are they flattening something that brings color and depth to my life?

And like anything juicy and useful in life, the answer is always: It depends.

Sigh. That’s my least favorite answer. Black and white is so much nicer… But the gold is always found in the gray.

You see, what’s right for you in the easy vs. hard debate will look different depending on the person, the stage of life, and the situation.

There is no simple formula.

For example, I have a little bot on Instagram that sends people information when they ask about a specific podcast or one of my online courses. (It’s not AI—just an automation.) It saves me HOURS each month of cutting and pasting the same replies over and over. It helps me serve people better and keeps me from spending dozens of hours in my DMs, which isn’t great for my mental health (or my eyesight). In that case, I’m thrilled to hit the “easy” button and let Mr. Robot do the repetitive work.

On the flip side…

I’ve been a content creator since 2010 and have tried countless “easy breezy content systems” over the years. In the past, if a guru told me they could help me turn one idea into fifty pieces of content, I’d beg them to take my money. I’ve signed up for more of those programs than I can remember.

Do those systems work?

Technically, yes. And they can indeed produce mountains of content.

But every single time, they fall flat for me. The material I’ve produced through them has been content, sure… but it always feels like it’s missing something and no one interacts with it. People can feel the difference.

And so, I continue to produce my content the old-fashioned, rather inefficient way: I create bits and pieces for each individual platform… and almost always, the things I create in the heat of the moment, the off-the-cuff observations, and the slightly unhinged sermons I write in my head in the shower at 10:37pm resonate the most.

I couldn’t optimize the process if I tried… and I’ve since realized I don’t want to.

This same tension shows up in my restaurant.

A restaurant has a billion moving pieces and there are some aspects where I BEG for convenience. We started using reservation software for our dinner nights a few months ago, and it has been a LIFESAVER. I have zero desire to manage 60 reservations each night manually.

But at the same time, I refuse to put QR codes on the tables for people to use as menus.

I could if I wanted to. I know how to do it. And it’d certainly save my staff time by not having to deliver menus to each table.

But I want people to hold the menu. I want my young servers to connect with guests when they walk in. I want the guests to feel seen. I want there to be at least one tiny pocket of life left where not everything has been frictionlessly optimized into a screen. I want the experience of dining with us to feel human.

And so, I contradict myself. A lot.

Sometimes people accuse me of being a hypocrite… which makes me laugh and say, “Well duh!”

I will absolutely preach efficiency in one breath and choose deliberate inconvenience in the next.

I will buy store-bought tortillas to save time one day, while making a loaf of sourdough bread that requires a 10-hour rise the next.
I will automate repetitive DMs while refusing to let AI turn one podcast into 89 pieces of content.
I will use software to book restaurant tables, edit my photos, and build sales pages while simultaneously rejecting QR code menus.
I will streamline one part of life and purposely keep another part gloriously inefficient.

And it bothers me zero percent.

The point isn’t to form a rigid philosophy we can apply across every square inch of our lives. Rather, the point is to be awake enough to notice what certain shortcuts are stealing from our lives.

Is technology removing meaningless friction from my days? Or removing meaning from my life altogether?

Is it protecting my energy so I can use it elsewhere? Or simply saving time so I can spend more hours scrolling my phone?

Perhaps one of the strange luxuries of being alive in this modern moment is that we get to choose. Our ancestors couldn’t opt out of most hardships, but we can. And we can also decide to opt-in to meaningful struggle when it makes sense.

We get to decide when convenience is a gift and when it is a thief. We get to decide which frictions are worth removing, and which ones give shape and meaning to our days.

And we get to remember: not every hard thing is holy. But not every easy thing is harmless either.