Failing is Common, Trying is Rare

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Failing is Common, Trying is Rare

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When you die, you appear before a studio audience and they give you a standing ovation. The host then interviews you about your great successes and misses in life.

One thing you realize, when they review the footage, is that you didn’t really try most of the time.

You thought you had tried and failed to learn a second language, to make a million dollars, to get really fit. You made an attempt or two, but in hindsight you were not in any way determined to make it happen.

Fake trying is hard to see in real time, at least in yourself, but there are hints.

Five years ago, I signed up for a 10k race when I was in no shape to run 10k. I had months to get ready, so by race day I could easily finish in less than an hour.

There were setbacks. I injured my foot, so I couldn’t train for a while. When I was about recovered, we had a brutal heatwave, which made it hard to get enthusiastic about training. Then I had a minor medical procedure, which set me back another few weeks.

Ten days out from race day, I could barely get to 5k. At this point, running 10k without stopping was impossible. So I lowered my goal: get to the halfway point without stopping, then walk. This seemed like a sensible compromise.

On race day I felt fine. I made it to the halfway point and wasn’t dying to walk, so I kept running. By mile four I knew I could finish the race without stopping, and I did.

There was nothing special going on that day. I didn’t have a great sleep, I didn’t feel inspired. I certainly hadn’t trained well. The only difference from my training runs was that, in a race setting, with spectators and timekeepers, it felt harder than usual not to actually try.

This experience made me realize (momentarily) that trying — seriously attempting a goal — is much rarer than failing. Most failures aren’t preceded by trying, but rather by reasoning yourself out of really trying.

Not looking good for today’s training

I was reminded of this fleeting insight recently by a post from Cate Hall, who writes about discovering personal agency relatively late in life. She points out that we often don’t act like people who want to succeed:

Putting in a mediocre effort at a given task is deeply irrational if our goal is success at that task. But often, when we put in a mediocre effort, it’s because we have other covert goals we’re not really acknowledging.

She says people typically try one strategy, it doesn’t get them what they want, and then they stop. Often this is because the initial setback turns their intentions toward a conflicting goal, such as being comfortable, not being embarrassed, or not being disappointed again.

He lives inside all of us, waiting to take the wheel

In Cate’s example, a consultant is trying to make more money. There are lots of good strategies a person could use to make this happen: raise rates for existing clients, reach more people by making more content, develop new services to offer, find a mentor to guide you, and more.

But instead, the consultant tries one strategy, it doesn’t work, and she stops, because her attention has turned to other goals:

Not having to worry that she’s coming off as pushy

Not releasing content that does poorly and which nobody reads

Not acknowledging a gap in her skillset that needs to be improved

It would seem to make more sense – certainly from the perspective of a guest on the Afterlife Talk Show — to pursue a goal whose prize would outweigh all those smaller considerations (such as doubling your income) and try it for real.

Tried to look fabulous for posterity, succeeded

To try for real means to sustain your aim on that desired outcome without flipping to a lesser, more cowardly goal when you experience some pain or frustration.

Real trying should be a trial: a prolonged experience consisting of the exact sequence of mistakes, pains, and setbacks that make success possible from where you began.

Goals usually must be achieved by gaining understandings and skills you didn’t have at the outset. You learn how to handle this or that type of interaction, how the pros really do X, and how to avoid pitfalls Y and Z. Trying means enduring the trial of learning these things, mainly by doing them in ways that don’t work. If there was no trial, either you got lucky and succeeded immediately, or you didn’t try.

To try is to undergo the trial to its end, which is either success, or a genuine, earned understanding that the prize isn’t worth what it really would cost you.

An easy way to tell if you’re really trying is to ask yourself, “How would someone who is actually determined to do this go about it?” Right away, you know whether that’s you.

On trial, willingly

When I think back about the goals I’ve failed to achieve, I seldom made a best effort...