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Trying
4 min read · 819 words
Trying is the inhabitant’s effort in the direction of an outcome — and the relationship between trying and outcome is more variable than the cultural messaging suggests.
The hardware was built to invest effort in pursuit of outcomes. Some outcomes respond to effort in a straightforward way; trying harder produces more result, up to the limits of capacity. Some outcomes do not respond to effort in this way; the trying does not produce more result, and in some cases the trying interferes with the result. The skill is identifying which configuration applies to the current outcome being pursued.
This is not what the inhabitant is usually told. The inhabitant is usually told that if it isn’t working, try harder. The advice is correct in some cases. In others it is precisely backwards, and following it produces the appearance of dedicated effort along with the steady worsening of the very outcome the effort is aimed at.
TRYING HARDER WHERE TRYING IS THE PROBLEM
The inhabitant who tries harder to sleep often sleeps worse.
The inhabitant who tries harder to relax becomes tenser.
The inhabitant who tries harder to be loved sometimes produces the effect opposite to the one intended.
Some outcomes require operations that are not well-described as trying — letting, allowing, ceasing the trying that has been interfering. Framing all outcomes as responsive to effort produces continued effort in directions where effort is the wrong operation. The harder the inhabitant tries, the further the outcome retreats, with the inhabitant interpreting the retreat as evidence that even more trying is needed. The escalation is comic from outside. From inside it feels like devotion.
DECLINING TO TRY WHERE TRYING WOULD WORK
The opposite failure mode.
The cultural messaging that the right opportunities will find the inhabitant, that the right relationships will appear naturally, that the work will flow when conditions are right — these messages contain partial truths and substantial errors. Most outcomes that inhabitants want require sustained effort over substantial time. The configuration of waiting for them to arrive without effort produces an inhabitant who waited for something that was not coming.
There is no version of manifesting that fixes the unstarted novel.
THE DIAGNOSTIC
For each current direction the inhabitant is trying in: is trying the operation that will produce the outcome, or is some other operation more appropriate?
The honest assessment usually surfaces some directions where trying harder is the appropriate response, and some where the trying itself is interfering with what the inhabitant wanted to produce. The two often coexist in the same week, in the same inhabitant, applied to different domains. Sleep responds to less trying. The novel responds to more. The inhabitant who applies the same posture to both gets bad results in one of them.
IDENTIFYING THE ACTUAL OPERATION
Sleep arrives when the inhabitant ceases trying to sleep and runs the operations that produce sleep — dark room, regular schedule, wound-down state.
Connection arrives when the inhabitant ceases trying to be liked and runs the operations that produce connection — presence, honesty, interest in the other person.
Creative output arrives when the inhabitant ceases trying to produce something good and runs the operations that produce work — showing up, putting down rough drafts, sustained engagement.
In each case, the trying was misdirected. The underlying operations were the variable. Try harder was the wrong instruction, and substituting it for the actual operations is what kept the result out of reach.
SUSTAINABLE EFFORT
When trying is the appropriate operation, run it sustainably.
The inhabitant who applies effort at unsustainable intensity often produces a brief burst followed by extended depletion, with the total output being less than steady sustainable effort would have produced. The configuration that works is effort calibrated for what the inhabitant can sustain across the time horizon the outcome requires — not the intensity that proves seriousness in the short term and collapses before the outcome arrives.
The two-week sprint to write a book ends in week three with no book. The thirty-minute daily practice produces it in eighteen months.
TRYING AS NARRATIVE
I’ve been trying sometimes describes substantial effort. Sometimes it describes a narrative about effort that is not actually occurring.
The phrase has a particular function. It positions the inhabitant as engaged with the problem without committing to evidence that the engagement is producing anything. The diagnostic is the operations actually being run, not the inhabitant’s account of trying to run them. The honest internal accounting often surfaces that the trying has been verbal rather than operational — and that nothing was actually moving despite the inhabitant feeling that they had been working hard.
This is uncomfortable to acknowledge. It is also the entry point to the actual operation, which begins where the narrative ended.
The effort is one input. The appropriate operation for the current outcome is what determines whether effort is the right input.