Is it better to try with an amount of effort that you know is not sufficient to succeed or to not try at all?
Introducing Questions You Have.
Introducing Questions You Have — special editions of the newsletter where I answer questions submitted by you, dear reader. This is one such edition, based on a question from a reader! Got a question? Drop it into this form, anonymously or with your name: https://forms.gle/w88BLRFGRqpWDGtS9
This question posits that when considering whether or not to attempt to do something, one has essentially three options:
Option 1: Try with an amount of effort that you know is sufficient to succeed
Option 2: Try with an amount of effort that you know is not sufficient to succeed
Option 3: Do not try
These options rely on the assumption that it is possible to know, before trying, how much effort is sufficient to succeed. Sure, sometimes it’s basically possible to know how much effort is sufficient to succeed. If you’re baking a cake, you can know what you need to do to reasonably succeed (but even that, anyone who’s tried baking a cake can tell you, is not assured!).
However, when it comes to larger, more existential efforts, can you truly know how much effort is sufficient to succeed? At best, you’re taking a guess. Maybe an informed, educated guess, but a guess nonetheless. Sometimes you succeed at something you thought you’d fail at; sometimes you fail at something you thought you’d succeed at; sometimes you succeed when you thought you’d succeed and fail when you thought you’d fail.
Only when we’ve finished trying can we evaluate whether or not we tried with enough effort. We can look back and say, we succeeded, so the amount of effort we tried with was sufficient. Or we can look back and say, we failed, so the amount of effort we tried with was not sufficient.
In other words, we tell ourselves stories. In the future, whether you tried or not, you’ll tell yourself and/or others a story about why you did or didn’t try, and how it went. I imagine Orpheus explaining why he tried, and how it went.
In attempting to answer this question in the present, you’re attempting to predict what story future-you will tell about present-you. You’re trying to decide whether future-you is more likely to tell a story about how you succeeded, how you failed, or how you chose not to try. But that story can’t be told yet, because it has happened. Orpheus didn’t know his story would be a tragedy.
So when considering whether or not to try, the options become:
Option 1: Try with an amount of effort that you believe is sufficient to succeed
Option 2: Try with an amount of effort that you believe is not sufficient to succeed
Option 3: Do not try
Maybe, question-asker, you’re thinking, well, statistically, I will probably fail at this thing given the amount of effort I think I will expend on it, and then I will have to tell a story of deficiency. Or conversely, maybe you’re thinking, given my history, it’s likely that I will succeed at this thing, and then I will be able to tell a story of triumph.
I understand the appeal of this kind of thinking, in which even if we can’t know the future, we can at least almost know it. We can approach knowing the future. To a degree, I agree, we can take reasonable guesses at the future. But like… the future is the future because it isn’t here yet. What isn’t here yet can’t be fully known.
It’s scary, or can be scary, to fully embrace the idea that no matter how much we learn, test, explore, study, or whatever, we do not know the future — personally, politically, globally, spiritually, financially, logistically, emotionally. Embracing this perspective changes the options again:
Option 1: Try with an amount of effort that will later be revealed as sufficient to succeed
Option 2: Try with an amount of effort that will later be revealed as not sufficient to succeed
Option 3: Do not try
Perhaps there is a temptation to lump options 2 and 3 together, to think, if you don’t end up succeeding, isn’t that functionally the same as not trying at all?
No, they are different. Because in option 2, present-you is trying. In option 3, present-you is not trying. Those are two different present-you’s, potentially leading to two different future-you’s even if in both of those futures, you did not achieve the thing you were considering trying to achieve.
The action of trying at whatever it is you, question-asker, are considering trying, is an active thing you will or won’t experience, in your present timeline. Sinking into that present-you, perhaps the question becomes:
What does it feel like to try?
What does it feel like to not try?
What does it cost to try?
What does it cost to not try?
What is unlocked by trying?
What is unlocked by not trying?
What does your day-to-day look like when trying?
What does your day-to-day look like when not trying?
How did Orpheus feel as he fought for Eurydice?
I think for better or for worse, what this question actually comes down to is: right now, right here, do you want to experience trying, or do you want to experience not trying?
Not trying isn’t the absence of trying; it’s the presence of not trying.
Do you want to try, or do you want to not try?