“If at first, you don’t succeed, try and try again”, goes the saying. The sentiment behind this is commendable, and speaks to both learning from your mistakes and also fostering resilience. However, many people, through messages from the past, live by the ‘try hard’ (or ‘work hard’) driver. I will explore this a little in this blog post.
Often when we look at drivers, they come with the questions of “what is the harm of that?” This is a logical question to ask when, as with helping others, there is a benefit to trying hard to achieve things. The problem arises if that achievement never comes. Unfortunately, in the mind of someone with the ‘try hard’ driver, it may never come. These are the individuals who downplay their successes. They are continually striving for the next thing, as what they have is not quite good enough. For them, the most important thing is the trying (or the work). It doesn’t matter if every exam in a particular topic has been studied and aced, there must be more to be done or learnt. So one downside to this driver is that tasks are never completed. In this I am reminded of the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who is punished by having to roll a stone up a hill, only to have it roll to the bottom. He then has to start again. His work is never done, and the achievement of having rolled it to the top is seen as fruitless.
For those with this driver, their self-worth is derived from the effort and work they put in. If they are not doing something, then others will believe them to be not good enough or unworthy of appreciation. For this reason, to steal from business speak, those that are driven in this way will often ‘work hard, rather than work smart’. This can often lead to procrastination behaviours. In respect of particularly difficult or challenging tasks, it is better to be doing something rather than nothing. Many jobs might get started, but often most (if not all) will never reach a conclusion. This is because worth is derived from the trying, not the success.
I have seen this driver in a lot of learners at school. They have possibly learnt from past experience that certain tasks have led to failure. Rather than face that failure again, they would rather not engage with the task at all. They come to believe that they can’t do that particular thing. Instead they will concentrate their considerable efforts into the things that they can do. For example, they may not be able to calculate angles in a triangle, but they are good at drawing them. Those learners will have the neatest and most elaborate drawings in the class. They may not have been doing what was asked, but they have been doing something. Once persuaded to have a go (after a lot of “I can’t”), these learners will often then state forlornly that they will ‘try’. From their tone and demeanour, you are left with the impression that there is little chance of success. This language will then be adopted for a whole range of tasks, even ones for which they have shown time and time again to be more than capable of completing.
The ‘try hard’ driver often compounds people to work to solve the world’s problems. They can see what is wrong with the world and feel frustrated by the unfairness and injustices in the world. Each underdog and strife presents them with their hill that they can push their rock up. There are, however, always going to be too many hills for one person to climb. Also, what happens when they get to the top of a hill? Well that’s an easy one to answer, they look for the next one to climb; not pausing to acknowledge that they made it up the first. This frustration with the world is very simple for them to transfer to themselves. They might know what they want to achieve but they will often have to admit that they can’t complete a task, or bemoan the fact that something is terribly difficult despite trying incredibly hard. If there is no acknowledgement for this effort, they can become stressed and disheartened, possibly to the point of not completing anything.
As with the other drivers, there are ways to address and challenge the behaviours associated with the ‘try hard’ driver. I outline some suggestions for these below:
Yoda was on to something: In the Return of the Jedi, Yoda utters to an exasperated Luke Skywalker, who cannot manage to lift and stack a pile of rocks with the power of the force, “do or do not, there is no try”. Although this might seem harsh, it is a useful mind set to have if you are driven to ‘try hard’. It is suggesting that a commitment be made to a task, and that there will be a completion to it. The outcome itself doesn’t matter, as you may either succeed or fail. What is important is that there is an outcome. Sometimes it can be as simple (with a lot of practise) as changing how you talk about tasks, switching from “I’ll try”, to “I will” (or “I won’t”)
Procrastination is the thief of time: In the ‘try hard’ driver, there is a hint of ‘please me’, as often a multitude of different tasks will be taken on (usually for other people, as this is socially acceptable), so that there can be a lot of work done. Unfortunately, this dilution of effort means that important tasks are usually given equal weight to trivial ones. Therefore, we have procrastination. It is tempting to the needs of others before ourselves, and so efforts should be made to focus on our priorities first. Taking a pause to prioritise will also allow for an accurate and rational assessment of what is achievable or controllable; and what is not. Short to-do lists may help with this, as long as the task of creating the to-do list is not used as a procrastination task!
Congratulate completion: If interacting with someone that has this driver, ensure that you offer praise for the completion of the task, rather than the trying. This might seem unusual, as we are often given the message that it is “not the winning or losing that counts, it is the taking part”. The key, however, is that it is not the outcome that is important, rather the fact that they made it to the end of the game or the task. Remember that both ‘do’ and ‘do not’ are both valid outcomes. Also, ensure that tasks are actually completed, especially before the person starts off on their next search for busyness.
It’s not a competition: As with many drivers, there is a temptation to compare ourselves with others. As trying is the primary behaviour of those with this driver, they may see themselves as working or trying more than others. It may be difficult, but if someone who is ‘trying hard’ tries to compare their effort to yours, it is best to rise above and ignore it.
It may be easy to minimise successes when they are framed against those of someone else (completely ignoring rational things like context or situation). If tasks are broken up into manageable pieces, and time is taken to acknowledge and celebrate progress, the need to compare with others should diminish.
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