Why Trying Harder Doesn’t Work and What to Do Instead

“I’ll just try harder!” How many times, frustrated with yourself, have you doubled-down and said that? I have. When we’re not getting the results we want in our job, our relationships, our body, and/or our spiritual life, we commit to trying harder. Doing all things. Harder this time. “It’ll work this time because I’m going to try harder!” But it doesn’t. Because trying harder doesn’t work.

Doing What’s Not Working, Only Harder, Won’t Make It Start Working

The engineering company I worked for had a serious problem.

Our customers were certain 3-letter government agencies. Our building had a “secure room” where we did sensitive work for these customers. The room had a separate alarm code from our office space, and a badge reader at the door, so only people working on the program could enter the room.

Our daily cadence was, arriving 6:00 AM or earlier, the early-birds opened the room. Then, leaving after 6:00 PM, the late-birds secured & locked it. That worked fine, except for when it didn’t.

If the late guy had a doctor’s appointment and left early, nobody locked the room. The late guy thought somebody else, the last person out of the room, would secure the room. But the last person out didn’t know they were the last person out. They didn’t know the late guy had left early.

It was even more confusing, because there were multiple late guys, and each thought one of the others would lock the room. And some days, only the early guys were in the room, expecting one of the late guys to lock it. But none of the late guys knew that.

Anyway, it seemed like every 3 or 4 months or so, an early guy would come in early and find the room unlocked. Snap. That’s a security violation that has to be reported to the Government Customer. Enough violations in a short enough time period, and it’s game over. Contract terminated, company folds, and we’re all unemployed.

So the facility manager would send out an urgent email: “We all need to try harder to make sure the secure room is locked each night! This is everyone’s responsibility!” But in another 3 or 4 months, snap, we’d have another violation. Trying harder wasn’t working.

I had an idea I shared with the facility manager. And it wasn’t trying harder. Everyone in the office was hired because we were all responsible, conscientious, trust-worthy, dependable people. Everyone was already trying as hard as they could. We all knew the stakes. We couldn’t try any harder.

When you’re already doing your best, you can’t try harder. You have to do something different.

We had to do something different. We laminated a 3” x 4” colored card, a “room tag,” and put it on a chain. When the secure room was locked, it hung on the doorknob outside the room.

When an early guy unlocked the room in the morning, he hung the room tag around his neck. It was big enough that you couldn’t forget you had it and accidently go home while you were wearing it.

So the procedure was, when the early guy left for the day, he had to find a late guy to accept the tag. If you accepted the tag, you accepted responsibility for locking the room that before you left that night. If the early guy couldn’t find a late guy to accept the tag, he locked the room and hung the tag outside the door.

And everyone in the office knew at a glance if the room was locked, by whether the tag was hanging outside the door or not.

Bam! Instantly, no more security violations. The secure room was never left unlocked again. It worked.

Trying Harder Focuses on the Wrong Thing

So, yes, your results are driven by your actions. If you want different results, you need to take different actions. But focusing on the actions themselves is not enough.

Every addict, whether the addiction is drugs, alcohol, porn, food, gambling, shopping, or whatever, has experienced that trying harder doesn’t work. “Ok, I’ll take a different action. I won’t do that thing ever again!” And then they find themselves frustrated, having just done that thing. Again.

Trying harder focuses on our actions. But our actions are not the root of the problem, which is why trying harder doesn’t work. It puts our focus in the wrong place.

Our actions are driven by our decisions. In the secure room example, we decided to implement a new procedure. And that decision drove actions, before the room was left unlocked, that made all the difference. An addict needs to decide to identify and deal with their triggers, before the next episode happens.

But even focusing on our decisions is the wrong place to focus. Because our decisions are driven by our thinking. And our thinking is where we need to focus. That’s where the progress and the breakthroughs happen.

Thinking –> Decisions –> Actions –> Results

So if you want different results, take different actions, by making different decisions, by changing your thinking.

With the secure room, we made a paradigm shift in our thinking. We went from thinking, “It’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure the secure room is locked” (which sounds great on paper), to “It’s the person with the room tag’s responsibility to make sure the secure room is locked.”

If an addict is ever going to beat the addiction, they need to be willing to journey into the pain that addiction is medicating. They need to take the journey to discover the lies in their thinking, and replace those lies with God’s truth.

What We Think Because of Our Trauma

The trauma we endured was out of our control and is never our fault. But what we think about ourselves as a result of it is in our control.

To over-simplify it for the sake of example, someone abused as a child might think, “I’m dirty. I have no value.” So they decide, “I don’t deserve any better.” So they choose abusive partners. And they hate the results in their relationships.

But simply being determined to not get in another abusive relationship leads to frustration, acquiescing to, “Oh well here I am again. I guess it’s just always going to be this way.” Because unhealed faulty thinking is leading to the same lousy results.

But replacing the lies with God’s truth, doing the hard work to actually change their core thinking, they come to believe, for example, “I am beautifully and wonderfully made. I am God’s precious child and he loves me for me, before I do anything good or bad.” Then they decide they will never settle for lesser loves again. They take different actions, setting healthy boundaries, and not engaging with unhealthy people. And they enjoy the results of attracting healthy relationships.

Although that’s a way over-simplified example, you get the point. To change our results, we ultimately have to change our thinking. So trying harder doesn’t work, because it’s focused on our actions, while the problem is in our thinking.

Changing our thinking leads to making different decisions, which leads to taking different actions, which leads to the results we want.

Your Turn

Have you tried to change your actions without changing your thinking? How’d that work for you? What paradigm shifts have you made in your thinking that have led to different decisions, different actions, and better results? Share your story in the comments to help the community. And share this post if it will bless others.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

I learned the concepts in this post from Andy Andrews’ book “The Noticer Returns” (not an affiliate link). Andy skillfully wraps practical Kingdom concepts up in an entertaining and engaging fictional story. It’s a great, fun, and easy read. I highly recommend it.