There’s a simple psychological truth that no one likes to hear: Some problems can’t
be solved by trying harder. 9 times out of 10, The Rolling Stones have
it right: “You can’t always get what you want. But
if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.”
In most areas of life, trying harder and applying more effort usually leads to better results:
Studying more for exams leads to better grades. Running a little longer on the treadmill leads
to better fitness. Working a few extra hours leads to a bigger
paycheck. Having the difficult conversations improves
the relationship. Proofreading that report a second time leads
to fewer errors. The idea that more effort equals better outcomes
is so baked into our culture that we’re often not aware of how pervasive and influential
it is. For most of us, we spend most of our lives
either in school or working. And in both these environments, effort is not only enforced
and encouraged, but it’s highly praised and rewarded as well.
In modern life, the cult of effort reigns supreme.
So much so that most of us think of the term “Hard Work” as an intrinsic good — something
that has worth for its own sake, regardless of the outcomes it produces.
This is a mistake.
Imagine the following scenario many of us have found ourselves in:
It’s been a brutally long day, you’re exhausted, and tomorrow is likely to be even
tougher. You get into bed a little earlier, hoping to catch an extra hour of sleep.
And yet, despite your exhaustion, you’re wide awake, mind running a hundred miles an
hour across everything from the bananas you forgot to pick up at the grocery store to
the allocation of funds in your 401K. You look at the clock, realize it’s been
an hour, and you still don’t seem any closer to falling asleep. Frustration builds, along
with some fear of how tomorrow will go if you don’t get some sleep.
If you’re paying attention, thoughts like these start swarming across your mental landscapes:
Why can’t I just FALL ASLEEP! I wish my brain would just shut off. The presentation
tomorrow’s gonna be a disaster if I don’t get some sleep. Should I take something to
help knock me out? I knew I shouldn’t have had that last beer after dinner.
The fear and frustration are stronger now and sleep seems even further away. Now a new
emotion sets in: Panic. What if there’s something wrong with me?
It’s not normal to be this tired and not sleep… Wait a second… How come I can feel
my heartbeat? Is there something wrong with my heart? Do I need to go to the emergency
room? Eventually, you do finally pass out. But no
sooner than you do, it seems, the alarm’s ringing and it’s time to get up. You glance
at the clock and realize — you only got 3 hours of sleep.
This example illustrates a simple psychological truth: For a certain class of problems, the
harder we try the worse the problem becomes. I call these problems Paradoxical Problems
because our standard approach to solving them only makes them worse.
In the case of sleep, the more we worry about not sleeping the less sleepy we become.
When we worry, ruminate, problem-solve, and generally expend mental energy trying to do
anything, we signal to our brain to go into work mode. And work mode (technically, arousal)
is the exact opposite of sleep. You can’t be aroused and sleepy at the same
time. And even though our instinctive response to
any problem is to try harder (especially to think harder), in cases like this, it only
makes the problem worse.
I used this example to illustrate how trying harder to sleep paradoxically makes it less
likely that you’ll get sleepy. But the broader point is this:
We need to come to terms with the idea that trying harder is not always a good idea.
While expending more effort, especially more mental effort, is helpful in 9 out of 10 problems,
we should accept the fact that this strategy doesn’t always work. And in fact, it occasionally
makes things worse. The implication is that we ought to be more
flexible with how we approach problems in our lives and not instantly rush to start
thinking and trying harder. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
But sometimes life gives us screws.