Effort Is a False Concept: “The Moment You Exert Yourself, You Go Astray”—Let Things Take Their Natural Course

Why does Daoist philosophy have no place for the word “effort,” and why were Su Shi’s last words “The moment you exert yourself, you go astray”? One of the main threads of Daoist philosophy revolves around this very word: “effort.”

I. We Have Already Done Everything We Can

1. The vast majority of people have already done everything they can

Every student in every classroom across the country, every person in every office cubicle, every worker on every factory assembly line, every delivery worker and cleaner—who has not done everything they can in their own life? Are the bottom 10 students in every class all “not trying hard enough,” or has fate given them a script so difficult that they are already struggling with all their strength just to cope?

“Most Personal Problems Are Human Problems and Social Problems”:

For an ordinary Afghan girl, a Black person in an American slum, or a Vietnamese worker, their top 100 problems—poverty, insecurity, survival, violence, pornography, gambling, drugs, hunger, inferiority, repression, despair, a lack of positive social interaction, and so on—are all social problems, rather than her or his “personal problems.” For an ordinary white European or American, their top 100 problems—family, social relationships, career planning, challenges at work, psychological problems, existential crises, and so on—are all human problems, rather than her or his “personal problems.”

1. The deeper mind/libido has already done all it can, so be tranquil and practice nonaction

The deeper mind/libido knows everything, has worked through every possibility, and has done everything it can. But the thinking of the concrete self refuses to accept this; the ego, driven by greed, anger, and delusion, keeps meddling and acting recklessly.

In your studies and career, isn’t your current situation already the result of doing everything you could? What more are you striving for? Exhausting your mental and emotional strength, then attacking yourself.

In any relationship, isn’t the current situation already the result of doing everything you could? Continuing to “try harder” is useless, or counterproductive.

Most people have long since depleted their mental and physical resources through sustained exertion. The only thing they need to work at is lying flat and resting quietly, allowing the id to heal naturally in tranquility.

With tranquility and nonaction, your abilities, intelligence, and energy will not disappear. People cannot remain idle forever.

Previous articles: “My Structure: The Concrete Self Accompanies the Libido” and “A Very New Kind of Ego: The Task-Doer Ego”

1. Live in the present, accept the present, and be grateful for the present

However painful or terrible the present may be, isn’t it already the result of having done everything you could?

“Effort” often merely expresses dissatisfaction with, rejection of, and a desire to escape the present. Do not regret the past; do not worry about the future.

Live in the present, accept the present, and be grateful for the present. “Be Grateful to Your Past Self, Be Grateful to Your Present Self”

“Accepting Mediocrity” and “How to Embrace Your Dark Side”

II. The Truth About Fate

1. Be at peace with your circumstances and follow the natural course of things

Finitude, tranquility and nonaction, letting things take their natural course. One part effort, nine parts beyond your control.

Do what you can and be at peace with fate: this means making peace with yourself and with life, without the obsession with, or concept of, “effort.”

Let things take their natural course. Work, rest, enjoy yourself, make plans, and adjust them naturally. Everything unfolds naturally, leisurely and at ease, without any sense of strain or effort. Su Shi: “The moment you exert yourself, you go astray.”

Previous article: “Zhuangzi: Let Things Take Their Natural Course”

1. Historical materialism and dialectical materialism

Marxist philosophy also says that human beings have one part freedom and nine parts unfreedom.

Previous articles: “Luck Is Beyond Your Control, Effort Is Unimportant, and You Cannot Change History—but You Can Be Happy” and “It Is Not Hard to Calmly Accept Your Own Failure; Calmly Accept a Historical Ebb”

Previous articles: “Practice Marxism-Leninism the Way You Practice Daoism” and “Practice Marxism-Leninism the Way You Practice Zhuangzi’s Philosophy.” Many people have a “savior complex,” a desire to “be a bodhisattva,” or a “revolutionary complex.” These are actually elitist notions of bestowing favors, rather than a view of history centered on the masses. Marxism does not need any particular person to promote it, and world revolution does not need anyone to make a deliberate effort—as though world revolution could not begin unless you tried hard.

1. The luckier you are, the harder you work—not the harder you work, the luckier you get

The key is the positive feedback loop: learned helplessness versus self-efficacy.

Previous article: “Escaping the Toxic Motivational Platitudes About ‘Effort’: Tennis and Programming as Typical Examples of ‘The Luckier You Are, the Harder You Work’”

Instead of being grateful to fate, elites embrace elitism and belittle people in difficult circumstances. Sooner or later, that elitism will turn against them.

Previous article: “You Cannot Be a Social Darwinist and an Elitist Only When Luck and Power Are on Your Side: A Common Pattern Among Programmers at Major Tech Companies and People Working in Finance”

III. Making an Effort Is Itself the Mistake

1. When you are truly in a good state, there is no exertion; making an effort is itself the mistake

In social relationships, comfortable, mutually nourishing connections carry no sense of effort. Once signs of effort and exertion appear, they often alert us that something is wrong with the relationship.

Relationships between people do not require effort; the key is choosing whom you connect with. With the wrong person, however hard you try, things will never improve; they will only get worse. With the wrong person, in a bad marriage, the harder you “work” at maintaining it, the more it fails.

Anyone who has ever done well academically knows that when studying goes well, there is no sense of effort at all. It is natural, smooth, immersive, mindful, and deeply invigorating.

Flow involves no exertion. Exertion, by contrast, means failing to enter flow and flailing about. Tranquility and nonaction make it easier to enter flow.

1. Effort in the wrong direction

It is like a car with its handbrake on and its tires smoking, or a car traveling in the wrong direction.

All that effort goes to waste.

Success in a career certainly does not depend on effort alone—as though those who lost out had not tried hard.

Previous article: “Stop Trying So Hard: With Every Person and Every Situation”

1. Energy consumed by inner conflict

Previous article, “Carrying Hell With You: The Libido Constructs Hell in the Inner Theater”: People’s energy has been there all along; it is simply consumed by inner conflict. The libido cannot be healthily invested outward and instead regresses inward, directing aggression at oneself and consuming enormous amounts of energy. “I must try harder” is often merely part of that self-attack.

IV. Breaking the Obsession with Effort

1. Compulsive striving

Previous article: “The Small-Town Test-Taker Malaise”

“Only by Enduring the Bitterest Hardships Can You Become Someone Beneath Others: Suffering Has No Meaning in Itself”

1. Attributing success to effort is foolish

Attributing success to effort means claiming credit for what fate has given you. It may seem like praising yourself, but it actually belittles yourself—as though you were unworthy, as though you were very likely not to “try hard”—while also belittling fate and other people. It is the internalization of society’s pervasive belittlement and suppression.

Many among the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie make money through luck, then lose it through their own ability and hard work, precisely because they do not understand the relationship between fate and “effort.”

1. Previous article: “Breaking the Obsession with ‘Not Trying Hard Enough’”

Why do people so often disregard their decline and their efforts?

a. Because their personality lacks strength. They are either conceited and moved by their own efforts, or plagued by inferiority and self-loathing. They sink into weakness and ignore their decline. Only when they have grown to a certain stage and developed confidence can they face themselves, their efforts, and their decline honestly.

b. Why disregard effort?

You are too exploitative and harsh toward yourself. This leads you to see any year without a standout achievement as a low point and a failure.

You believe human nature is lazy, and that unless people force themselves to try, they will make no effort. This misunderstands the human desire to improve. It is an inferior idea instilled from outside through conditioning.

c. Let go of the feeling that this is not enough. Things are fine as they are.

1. Previous article: “Education, Sociology, and Effort”

a. Education: It is plainly a brutal sorting assembly line, rather than a garden that nurtures people.

Yet it insists that high-achieving students work hard and low-achieving students do not.

Consciously or unconsciously, education applies the ruling class’s ideology to the teaching of ordinary students. This is “reproduction.”

“Unless you force yourself to try, you will make no effort” assumes that human nature is bad and that the masses are inferior. This is a serious failing of contemporary education. It denies the humanistic view that human nature aspires toward growth and goodness and possesses innate wholeness.

b. Sociology: Poor people are not failing to work hard

In countries carried by an overall tide of development, people are naturally industrious. Japan and Germany in the past, and Vietnam today, have all had periods when their people were called lazy and of poor quality. In countries caught in an overall tide of decline, such as those in Africa and Southeast Asia, people naturally “lie flat and become lazy.” What were Chinese people like at the time of the Opium War in 1840? Revolution and the benefits of globalization and marketization transformed dispirited poor people into hardworking poor people. In China in 1921, what poor people needed to do was not work hard at their jobs, but work hard for revolution. Does working hard for revolution count as effort?

V. The Most Precious Things Require No Effort

The truly precious things in life—love, friends, tranquility, happiness, joy, confidence, freedom and ease, and the innate wholeness of one’s own nature—are all unconditional.

For the sake of “effort,” we often deplete these most precious things, along with the scarcest things of all: time and life.

VI. Things More Important Than Effort

1. Awareness

Quiet “awareness” is the only thing a person needs to “work at.” Yet the less it feels like “effort,” the greater the awareness. The more relaxed and natural you are, the more aware you become. It is like someone with insomnia: the more relaxed and natural they are, the more easily they fall asleep; the harder they “try” to fall asleep, the more sleepless they become.

1. Tranquility

“Zhuangzi: Benefit Others Through Stillness”:

Spiritual practice can benefit others only through stillness. In turbulent times, a person who is still is a lighthouse in a raging sea, a lake in the Gobi Desert. They allow quiet to soothe, nourish, and support people’s hearts.

Through stillness, discern whom to connect with; through stillness, draw people to you; through stillness, benefit others.

In a noisy world, tranquility speaks loudest; let stillness resound and bring things to fruition. In a noisy world, human voices clamor, yet their sound does not travel far. Tranquility travels farther and touches the heartstrings. The music of heaven is silent.

Benefiting others through stillness in Marxism: Many people understand Marxism as something stirring and spectacular, full of youthful passion, struggle, and criticism—an intense drive to act and advance, an engagement with the world like fire. In fact, Marxism is quiet and composed, following the course of things through nonaction. Marxism is not dancing in a nightclub; it is the most arduous, longest, and most profound revolution.

1. Can you “work hard” at growth and spiritual practice?

Can a psychological counselor speed up someone’s process of change simply by “trying harder”? Can you “try harder” to accelerate and control the pace at which your inner karmic obstructions are worked through? No. Previous article: “Spiritual Practice Is a False Concept.”

1. Rest

Allow your vitality and mental and emotional strength to recover. Previous articles: “On Balancing Work and Rest,” “How to Address Not Allowing Yourself to Lie Flat,” and “How to Resolve a Midlife Crisis”

1. Choices matter more than effort

Your direction in education, career, and reading, and the people you form relationships with—these choices matter more than so-called effort.

Good choices are actually perceived, and awaited, in a state of abundant energy and deep tranquility.

They do not emerge from flailing about or “exploring.”

“Value Investing: A Reading List from Beginner to Advanced.” I often recommend value investing as a way into Daoist philosophy.

1. Fulfill your historical role

Only by truly understanding history, understanding your own historical role, fulfilling that role, and following the course of history can you practice nonaction while leaving nothing undone and let things take their natural course.

Previous articles: “It Is Not Hard to Calmly Accept Your Own Failure; Calmly Accept a Historical Ebb” and “Marx + Zhuangzi + Psychology: Marxism from the Bottom Up”