When “Try Harder” Stops Working

Why this strategy isn’t always a great fit. 

Try harder can be not only an intelligent strategy, but an effective one in certain settings and at certain points in your life. Over-efforting is a coping mechanism that is reinforced often and early. You learn to reach for it automatically. 

In a bounded environment - like school - you have a known objective with identifiable requirements, controllable inputs, and reliably predictable outcomes. You study more, read more, practice more, prepare more, and you are rewarded for it. It works for certain people.

An unbounded environment - like life in motion - is different. Life happens amongst ever-changing, and far less predictable variables. It’s particularly difficult when environments don’t adapt to the fact that you aren’t just performing in one environment. 

When you leave a bounded environment - like school, or life pre-kid - and life’s no longer just about grades or performance within that environment and population. You’re now trying to find your rhythm with:

• An evolving relationship with another human being.

• Workplace dynamics you don’t control.

• A body that changes. 

• A child who has needs. 

• A parent who needs care. 

• A career that no longer fits. 

• A goal that doesn’t hold the same desirability it once did.

The equation has completely changed. You can increase your effort, without increasing your progress. And that can feel disorienting. Disconnected. The more you effort, the more you can spin your wheels in reverse because the problem isn’t calling for more effort. The problem is more nuanced than input-output.

When you find yourself asking: “Why can’t I make myself try harder?” 

But that question rarely gets you what you need. 

The question feels sticky because there’s often something to dissolve first. The grief of what you thought life would be like after all that effort. Cultural narratives that you’ve discovered don’t fit you in the way you were taught to believe they would. Your relationship with achievement strategies that don’t work the way they used to. 

Dissolving is essentially impossible to do solo because you need access to more than just your highly-capable, highly-functioning evaluative brain. So…it’s not a you problem. And it’s not a problem you need to keep going after harder. 

I’ve been there. There is so much more than trying harder. It can feel so much better. We can sort it out together.