Starting on hard mode

If you are going to do something new, you should consider starting on hard mode.

Most people are more capable than they think. Having confidence in your ability is a muscle in itself. If you succeed starting on hard mode, you get good reps in. If you fail, well, hard mode is hard and there is no shame.
Rewards are often bigger on hard mode. Strong rewards build habits and strengthen motivation. This keeps you going.
Newbies underestimate pain. Use this to your advantage. Once you do something, you start anticipating pain. This adds overhead to what you do and makes you think twice.
1. Jensen on how he wouldn’t start NVIDIA again
2. Recoil anticipation
Pain does not grow linearly with difficulty. Oftentimes, it’s on a log curve or binary. If it’s going to be painful anyway, you might as well play in the big leagues.
Beginner approaches often teach you the wrong lessons or skills that aren’t transferable to hard mode. Unlearning things is difficult and you save a lot of time learning scalable techniques from the start.
Learning rate is usually higher when the skill ceiling is higher.
Experts have learned intuition that makes them talk and act a certain way. Being around that energy is helpful for learning. There are no experts playing on easy mode.
Peers playing on hard mode have ambitious goals. This allows you to use mimetic desire to your advantage.
You can always dial back the difficulty.
Starting on hard mode usually makes a great story. Sometimes a great embarrassing story.

Nuance

If starting on hard mode greatly increases risk of moderate injury or death, it’s not a great idea. Injury (physical and mental) prevents you from practicing and death ends the game.
Starting on hard mode doesn’t mean you should just waltz in. You should do more research and try to get more understanding since you won’t have training wheels. It’s part of the fun of starting on hard mode.
If hard mode prevents you from getting off the ground, then it is not worth it