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Maybe you’re not trying

(usefulfictions.substack.com)
448 points eatitraw | 1 comments | 16 Nov 25 10:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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lisper ◴[16 Nov 25 12:16 UTC] No.45944544[source]▶
I think the "maybe you're not actually trying" framing is not very constructive. The author did try, making decisions and taking actions that seemed appropriate for her situation at the time. The problem was that because her attempts to solve the problem failed -- again and again and again -- she stopped trying. Which is a not-entirely-unreasonable thing to do.

I would frame it more like: just because you have tried and failed doesn't mean you can't succeed, even if you have failed again and again and again. Circumstances change. New solutions become available. New resources or new insights present themselves. Sometimes just doing nothing and letting time pass actually produces progress. But the only thing that guarantees failure is to give up altogether.

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1. ChrisMarshallNY ◴[16 Nov 25 12:22 UTC] No.45944581[source]▶
That’s a great point, and was how I felt about it, after reading the article.

She did ask for help (more accurately, she accepted help from a trusted source). That was what made the difference. Someone came in with a new approach vector.

She sounds like a fairly remarkable person, so failure isn’t necessarily an indication of incompetence. Rather, it can be an issue of approach. We can get fixated on a particular workflow.

Humans are a social animal. We’re not built to “go it alone,” and that’s really our “secret sauce.” The whole can be greater than the sum of the parts.