We’ve already looked at the other four main personality drivers – ‘Be Perfect’, ‘Be Busy’, ‘Please People’ and ‘Be Strong’. Today we are looking at the final one: ‘Try Hard’.

As you can guess from the name, ‘Try Hard’ is all about effort – we value the amount of effort that we put into something.

Most of us carry around some version of this in our head; we associate hard work with being an admirable trait and ‘laziness’ as a something to avoid. But what happens when hard work becomes the primary way that we measure our self worth?

While this can lead to productivity and persistence, it can also result in stress, burnout, and a fear of completion.

How Do Try Hards Think?

• “I have to work hard to be successful”
• “People who don’t work hard are lazy”
• “I must improve myself constantly”
• “I can’t say no to requests, otherwise I’ll be seen as lazy”

Working Hard Martyrdom

The risk of linking our effort to being a valuable person is that it becomes obsessive – we just can’t stop. It’s a constant reward cycle – we work hard and people see us working hard, so we feel rewarded, so we work more.

That cycle can lead us into not just working for the sake of working, but to show that we can work more than other people, to prove that we are ‘better’ than other people. It can also be more negatively focused as we strive to simply prove that we aren’t lazy (which we never achieve because there is no end point).

In many cases this can lead to martyrdom; when we know that we are damaging ourselves through working too much, but we get a level of satisfaction from other people seeing us work ourselves into the ground. We get to play the martyr and no one can fault us for it because we are making money for the family or growing the business.

Where Does It Come from?

Like all personality drivers, the ‘Try Hard’ mentality is shaped by early childhood experiences. Our parents may have praised us for our efforts, encouraging us to work hard and do our best.

They probably moralised hard work, telling us that it’s the key to being a good person and achieving success. We may have also been taught that we should always strive for improvement, never settling for less than our best.

Or perhaps we were constantly told that we were lazy and now we seek to prove the opposite. Rather than accepting that our parents or teachers didn’t understand us, or that

Characteristics of Try Hards

Try Hard individuals are known for their enthusiasm, dedication, and persistence. They give their utmost in all situations and are often seen as role models and leaders.

However, they can easily become distracted by new opportunities and projects, hindering their ability to focus on what truly matters.

Completion can also be a challenge for them, as they constantly seek the next new thing to work on.

To some extent this can appear like ADD (attention deficit disorder) – lots of energy and enthusiasm for something for a while, until something new and shiny comes along and then boom, off we go in a new direction.

‘Try Hard’ versus Resilience

When we are run by a ‘Try Hard’ driver, we really like to think of ourselves as resilient. In fact, we pride ourselves on our ability to keep working while others drop away.

But this is not really resilience, because it isn’t sustainable. It damages our health because we don’t stop to recover properly. In fact, not taking breaks can become part of the obsession.

We also don’t look after our support network – our family and friends – because we don’t have time because we are working too much.

And our mental health takes a back seat, because we simply don’t have time to think.

Part of the problem is that our self worth is so linked to our effort that we can never truly feel like a good person because we could always put more effort in.

Finding the Balance

Working hard obviously can have great payoffs in terms of achieving things. However, when we are driven to Try Hard, we really benefit from focusing on:

Saying NO

It’s very easy to take on more work. We naturally say yes to everything that comes in because then we get to show how hard working we are. Learning to say “no”, or “not yet” is a valuable skill.

Holding healthy boundaries once we are working at capacity means that we are valuing our health and time.

Working Out What We Actually Want

We will find that because we say yes to everything, enthusiastically, we will often end up spending large amounts of time and effort on projects that we have no real interest in. It leads to the ADD-like effect – starting but not finishing many projects. This can be really demoralising and leave us berating ourselves for not finishing things.

Taking some time to evaluate why we might, or might not, want to do something other than it simply being another opportunity to work or ‘improve’ ourselves.

Finishing

Actually finishing some projects, without getting distracted or redirected, can be very healthy for us. It helps fight any fear of success or completion that we might have developed.

If you are a natural Try Hard, then your past it probably littered with uncompleted projects, so it can do our self worth some good to realise that we can complete tasks.

Forgiving Not Finishing

On the flip side, it can be really healthy to forgive ourselves for not completing things. We know that we often take on projects that we aren’t really enthused by, but seemed like a good idea at the start.

So, just allow yourself to think “oh, it’s one of those. No problem. The sooner I realise this project isn’t for me, the sooner I can work on something that genuinely lights me up”.

Appreciate the enjoyment and satisfaction you had for a while, regardless of the outcome, and move on.

Finding Other Ways To Value Ourselves

Disconnecting our self worth from our effort is the ultimate goal. We are always going to work hard because, for Try Hards, that’s just who we are, so we will never lose that.

But it will feel much more balanced when we value our intelligence, humour, care, empathy, social skills and the many other parts of us that also bring something to the world.

Stop Judging Others

As with all personality drivers, we judge other people by our own standards of self worth. If effort is our measure of worth, then there’s a good chance we are judging everyone else on this too.

But this just reinforces the value system. We are simply repeating the message that our parents/teachers pushed into us; laziness is bad, hard work is good.

Try to catch yourself every time you are about to use a phrase like “workshy” or “scrounger” and think about where that comes from and what values it reinforces in yourself. Think about the other ways in which that person might add value to the world instead.

There Is No Such Thing As Laziness

If avoiding being labelled as ‘lazy’ is part of your driver, then it can be useful to tackle the whole concept of laziness. As a coach, one of the things I have come to realise is that there is no such thing as laziness. There is only a lack of motivation.

When someone is deeply thirsty, they will be motivated to find a drink. When they are ravenously hungry, they will be motivated to find food. At no point does someone think “I can’t be bothered to find water. I will just die here instead“.

What we think of ‘laziness’ is usually a lack of interest or motivation. That may be fuelled by depression or lack of connection. It may be fuelled by lack of control and lack of choices. It may be fuelled by lack of urgent need (i.e. life is too easy). It may be that they are simply uninspired by their job.

But in my experience it is not an inherent trait. No one is a ‘lazy’ person.

How To Support Try Hard Individuals

If your partner or friend is driven to Try Hard, then there are a couple of ways in which you can support them.

Firstly, convey the message that their worth is not determined solely by their work or level of effort. Do NOT reward their hard work with statements like “it’s great how hard working you are”. That’s just going to reinforce their unhelpful value system.

Instead, value them for every other aspect of them:

• “I love it when you spend time with us”
• “That was a clever thing you said when…”
• “That was a great joke”
• “That meal was fantastic. You are a great cook”
• “Thank you for listening to me; it’s really valuable”

Encourage them to say no to excessive requests, and help them by asking whether this new project is really something that they will value and enjoy or is it just a shiny thing attracting their attention?

Remind them that it’s not just okay to take breaks, but a healthy part of resilience.

Emphasise the value of working smartly and effectively over the volume of effort.