Try-Hards
I’m not sure if the term “try-hard” is still commonly used in high schools across America but it sure was common 10 years ago.
In football practice, you’d have drills where you weren’t supposed to go full speed, but some kids would choose to and thus be dubbed a try-hard.
This was a derogatory term used to describe someone that just tried way too hard at everything. In the time since, I believe the term sweat has come to replace it. At the very least in CoD lobbies. Or the phrase, “go touch grass.”
All of these phrases are interesting as they degrade an objectively great skill to have. The skill of - you guessed it - trying hard.
As I listen to the book Grit by Angela Duckworth, I am reminded of all of the times we called people try-hards and how frowned upon it was to be a person that tried.
Reflecting now, it’s insane that people would put other people down for putting in effort. If you look at pretty much any person in the world that is successful at their craft, their success is predicated on the effort that they put into honing that craft.
Effort isn’t the only key metric, but it is a huge determining factor. You could have all of the talent in the world but if you fail to apply yourself to anything in your life, you will ultimately not amount to anything.
On the flip side, you could have less talent and apply yourself and accomplish your wildest dreams. There are tons of asterisks on this statement because it does depend on what you are pursuing and the approach that you take along with how you define success but operating with a bunch of assumptions here, it’s possible.
So why does our society try to bring others down? Is it because if other people put in massive amounts of effort, we believe that we need to rise to their standard? Is it because we would rather everybody be average than see that person succeed? Is it because, subconsciously, we know we could be doing more? Is it consciously?
When I think of shining examples of people we would call try-hards, I flash back to high school football.
There were times we would run drills at 60%, someone would go full speed and you’d want to smack the shit out of them. Usually resulting in them being called a try-hard under your breath. There is nothing quite like getting hit significantly harder than you are expecting, even with pads on. At other times, it was because you didn’t want to go as hard as they were making you push. While I still think the first situation would annoy the hell out of me, the second situation is how you continually improve.
If someone is going harder than you and forces you to step on the gas pedal - instead of trying to bring them down to your level - rise to theirs. You may not be able to do it immediately but this external pressure on you will force you to be better.
The benefits of rising to the level of someone working harder than you are pretty clear to see. You gain a higher standard for yourself, you push yourself to new heights, it could even result in raises, better bonuses, and growth in your personal life.
So why do so many of us avoid the extra work that these try-hards push us to do?
The word laziness comes to mind for me as that word has echoed in my brain since I was much younger but I don’t think that quite fits.
I think it’s due to a misalignment of values.
If what you are being encouraged to push yourself to do isn’t in line with an overarching goal that you have set for yourself, there is ultimately going to be friction for you.
Why the hell would you push yourself to do something that you don’t care about? If you can’t see how the underlying activity that you are doing plays into a larger goal you have, it’s going to take a lot for you to want to try hard.
I didn’t realize the massive misalignment of values I had with football for years.
My high school football team was bad. Our coaches my junior year tried everything that they could think of to try and turn the football program around.
Most of the season, I played tight end. That was, until we neared the end of the season. One day, my coach randomly put me on the offensive line mid-game. There was a huge problem with this - I didn’t know the plays from the position that I was getting put in at.
I can still remember turning to Curtis after every huddle and asking him, “what do I do on this play?” I’m so grateful he knew what we were doing because I had no idea. I had no desire to play offensive line - I wanted to play tight end.
After that first game, I decided I needed to actually know what I was doing on plays so that I could stop harassing Curtis and feeling like an idiot. Our offensive line coach also would test us weekly on our plays to see if we knew everything that was happening with the offensive line on that play.
I don’t remember there being a why but I do remember how unprepared I was for every single one of these tests. So, I would cheat and ask Tyler. Tyler, fortunately, for me knew what everybody was doing on every play so I didn’t have to do quite as many yards of bear crawls at the end of practice (there were practices that we would have 300+ yards of bear crawls after conditioning for each time we messed up during practice).
I honestly didn’t care to learn what the rest of the offensive line was doing. It felt irrelevant to what my side of the line was doing and I really didn’t want to play offensive line long term.
Ironically, I went on to play every single offensive down as the left tackle my senior year and played tight end and, you guessed it, left tackle in college. This pattern of behavior was pervasive even through these years where I was getting pretty decent at football but it would ultimately help me realize why I didn’t care to know the whole offensive scheme.
Why?
Because I really didn’t care to play football. Sure, I enjoyed it in high school and even for a little bit in college - before I loathed it with the entirety of my existence.
In high school, it was fun because you didn’t have to eat, breathe, and shit football. You played during the season and then you would turn your head to a different sport. In college, you were harshly confronted with the reality that football controlled your life. It controlled the time you were awake, the times you could take class, the times you had to be lifting, the times you were in study hall - all of my time felt like it was being dictated to me.
I hate not feeling in control of my life. While I am open to outside opinions, all that matters to me are my own opinions at the end of the day as I have to live with myself. This means that I really struggled with the structure of college football. Especially, when I started getting more play time my red-shirt freshman year.
Traveling with the team meant that I was losing huge chunks of my evenings and my weekends. For something that was once fun to me but I saw a limited future with.
While we had former teammates in the NFL that would visit us, I didn’t really want to go to the NFL. While it would have been cool, it really wasn’t my dream. Especially with all of the recent publicity surrounding CTE and football players killing themselves.
I thought I had a pretty decent brain and didn’t want to ruin it more than I already had.
The program that I was part of was a winning program. It demanded excellence. While I loved being part of a winning culture, I felt like I didn’t have a real reason that I was playing football. It felt like a time suck.
If I messed up, I’d get chewed out so I would do better. Being late to anything was unacceptable so I found excuses to not go to film due to class or study hall. Anything to take back control of my time.
Where I once took honor in leading workouts for our team or getting to suit up with the squad, I began to hate it. Each minute at each game felt like an eternity and I just wanted to be home doing anything else.
The culture of excellence began to wear on me because I was out of line with the values of the team. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t feel like contributing.
So I did the hard thing of cutting the cord and taking back control of my life. Not only was I cutting out a once significant part of my identity, I was cutting myself off from all of the camaraderie and an athletic scholarship that helped me afford my tuition.
Considering I had no job or prospects at the time and nobody paying for my education, this was a very risky decision.
I had been surrounded by try-hards but didn’t value football the way they did. I didn’t want to get up at 5:00 AM to work out anymore (okay, I never wanted to do this but I was willing to at one point). I didn’t want to get chewed out for something I didn’t care about. I just wanted to be myself and push myself to accomplish something that was actually meaningful to me.
You could be in a similar position to what I experienced when I was playing college football. You could find yourself surrounded by try-hards loathing that they want you to push yourself. Maybe it’s just one try-hard and you don’t understand why they work so damn hard and make you look so damn bad.
Maybe it’s not a them problem.
Maybe this points, instead, to a problem within you.
No, I don’t think you are a flawed person. I mean that maybe it points to an internal point of friction that you haven’t quite explored and come to terms with.
For me, this point of friction was that I just didn’t care that much about football. This became even more evident after I quit and I haven’t watched sports in general, let alone a football game since the Broncos won their last Super Bowl.
For you, this could be not seeing how your current job fits into your overall career progression. Not identifying skills that you are acquiring where you are at currently nor identifying how those skills could positively impact you in the future. It could be that you hate where you are in your personal life. You don’t like your living circumstances, your partner, or your lifestyle. You see no light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe it is simply that you hate your job and it doesn’t align at all with what you actually want to be doing with your life.
Regardless of what it is - it’s important to identify the gap. To understand why you don’t want to try harder. We all have dreams and aspirations. What do you want to accomplish with your life? How does your job play into this?
Don’t make this easy on yourself. If you work at Walmart and hate your life, there is something that you are getting out of your job - you just don’t realize it. How do I know this? Because I worked at Walmart and hated my life. This is not a prerequisite to working at Walmart but I found it was a pretty common side-effect.
“Well, if you hated your life there, what was the skill that you built?”
Self-awareness.
When I was 18 and working at Walmart, I came to realize that I was, in the eyes of my supervisors, a trustworthy person. They would often leave me to stock the aisles of grocery by myself because they trusted me to do so. When they had me help with unloading the truck and sorting shipments, my supervisor would rotate me because he wanted me to learn new skills. He showed me how to use the forklift (I sadly didn’t get certified before I left), taught me skills pertinent to all of the areas that we stocked, and showed me unique skills like claiming damaged goods. He trusted me and saw my potential and was setting me up to become a more valuable member of the team.
Through this, I became aware of how trustworthy I was through my integrity and basic work ethic. Candidly, I didn’t have to do anything crazy to be viewed this way - but that perception of myself has stuck with me to this day and I still bring up these characteristics in interviews.
Even if the only thing you are getting out of your job is the realization that you are in the wrong field, you are taking something away from it and growing. You just might not be aware of it.
Oh, and if you are calling someone a sweat in a CoD lobby, you just need to get gud.
