Why Trying Too Hard Can Backfire
Sometimes letting go is the best way to succeed
Ask a successful person what got them to where they are, and you’ll probably hear some version of: “A lot of hard work.”
It’s an answer that makes intuitive sense. I’m sure you can think of examples where you believe you failed because you didn’t try hard enough. In any endeavor, effort is certainly important.
But this simplification — the idea that putting more time, thought, or energy into something is guaranteed to give you better results — doesn’t show the whole picture. Perhaps you’re one point away from winning a game, and you put so much pressure on yourself that you not only cede the lead, but end up losing. Or you land an interview for the job of your dreams and spend hours prepping a response for every question you can think of, but then fumble on the most basic softballs.
People have long been grappling with this paradox. In Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, 19th-century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.” The late Harvard social psychologist Daniel Wegner discovered the reason why this is the case: When we try not to think of something, one part of our brain does its job to…
