Alex Harris: How to Do Hard Things

It’s fair to say we’re coming out of a hard year. Everything we’ve done for the past 12 months has taken more effort and resulted in less productivity. Perhaps we would’ve been better prepared if we’d all read a book Alex Harris wrote with his brother Brett a dozen years ago called Do Hard Things. In it, Alex and Brett proposed that doing hard things prepares you to do even harder things. You should get up early, they said. Step out of your comfort zone. Do more than what’s required. Find a cause. Be better than your culture expects.

So how did this teenage message prepare Alex for this last year as an adult carrying weighty responsibilities? In this special bonus episode of The Gospel Coalition Podcast, TGC senior writer Sarah Zylstra asked Alex about his experience clerking for two U.S. Supreme Court justices and editing Harvard Law Review, his brother Josh's high-profile deconstruction of his faith, whether evangelicals invest too much import in presidential politics, and much more. You can hear more from Alex in Zylstra's new book, Gospelbound: Living with Resolute Hope in an Anxious Age.

This episode of The Gospel Coalition Podcast is sponsored by Lifeway, publisher of Jen Wilkin’s newest Bible study, God of Deliverance: A Study of Exodus 1–18.  Learn more at lifeway.com/deliverance.