Why “Try, Try Till You Succeed” Is Bad Career Advice.
Thank you Disney for teaching me otherwise.
You work 12 hours a day.
You’re the last to leave work and you wake up bleary-eyed to get in early the next day. Hallelujah black coffee!
You are constantly striving for work-life balance. Ahem.
At the end of it, you get a bad (or not-so-stellar) performance review.
WTF ?!?
How is it that you did this exact same thing in school and college and aced your exams barely breaking a sweat?
Now in the real world, you’re apparently not that smart all of a sudden? Umm, what? Why??!
Why “try, try till you succeed” is bad career advice
The idiom is said to be inspired by a spider stoically weaving its web in a cave. Yes, really. 😂
I think we can safely say that we don’t work in isolation and having other people around us means we need to compete, whether we like it or not.
“Try, try till you succeed” though doesn’t take this into account.
1. It assumes hard work is the cure all.
Well, if Disney taught us anything — clearly not.
Never seen Wile e Coyote actually catch Roadrunner, have you?
2. It assumes the more time you spend the better results you get
To an extent, yes — especially if you are new and just absorbing knowledge. But once you know what you are doing and what you have to do next, more time doesn’t equal better results.
3. It assumes you get rewarded for trying.
Hello — this is not class participation, it’s real life.
4. It glorifies perfection.
“Let me edit the document for the 20th time by which point I’m changing my own perfect sentences for the 15th time and the font and borders for the 10th.”
Totally unnecessary — 80:20 works just fine.
5. It celebrates hard work without acknowledging the importance of the results.
Truth? Hard work doth not matter, only results do.
6. It conditions us to expect praise for working hard.
We feel good when we work hard — “it’s a day well spent,” we think. And we expect others to agree with us and our managers to appreciate us.
At the end, the disappointment of not being recognized hits home hard.
The honest truth is that
No one cares how hard you work, how much time you spend, how late you stayed up or how you feel at the end of it.
What you should do instead
Rather than judging your progress by how hard you work, change your perspective to work smart instead.
1. Focus on achievement instead of activity
Think of the results you want to achieve and work backwards to figure out how to get there.
Results could be the measures you are tracked against, or an important assignment that can make your manager / team look good.
Then spend 80% of your time on activities that will get you the result. i.e., be the roadrunner, not the Coyote!
2. Assess yourself objectively by your achievements and not your hard work.
This is easier said than done. At the end of the day, we all want to feel like we’ve achieved something meaningful, however small it may be. And we often list down the list of activities we did to help ourselves feel good.
Don’t fall into this trap.
Consciously assess if you’ve spent 80% of your time doing activities that will get you the right achievements.
If yes, great — move on! If not, do a little better tomorrow.
3. Make every attempt an experiment
As you are working on your big bets, create a hypothesis — an approach that you think might work. Try it and if doesn’t work even after two or three times, iterate and change it.
Progress will get you results, obstinately sticking to your point of view won’t.
If your friend was struggling with a project, what advice would you give them? Take the same advice.
4. Learn from people around you
Do you have colleagues who are amazing at leaving work at 6 p.m. everyday? Ask how.
Someone else who can knock Excel analysis out of the park like nobody’s business? Learn from them.
Learning is not a reflection of how much you don’t know. Learning is a way to help you get to your goals.
Make it less about your ego and more about the achievements that you’re after.
Being humble and (a little) shameless helps with not feeling like a self conscious prick doing this.
5. Prioritize and protect your time fiercely.
You own your time — don’t let others dictate your calendar. Get your work done first.
Seriously.
I mean it.
Jon means it too. We both do!
5. Get a thick skin
Last but certainly not the least, you’ll face a lot of challenges learning this process. People will say things, either to your face or behind your back. Managers will judge.
Don’t take it personally.
It’s called growing up.
Working smart doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly cut down your day to a 4 hour work week. It means that you focus your resources doing work that’ll help you move forward in your career.
Even if you don’t get the results you’re after, you’ll be appreciated for having clarity, being focused and thinking strategically.
Move to a results-first mindset and design your day around it.
P.S. — Too many Looney Tunes memes? Tell me in the comments! They’ll keep coming anyway. Probably.
P.P.S — Thanks to Tom Kuegler for the kick in the butt to finally get me writing. I’m doing his 30-day writing challenge. There, now I’ve said it!
