Should We All Just Stop Trying?

If at first you don’t succeed, what are you supposed to do?

The standard answer, of course, is try again. But the new book, Stop Trying, by writer and former music executive Carla Ondrasik, begins from a more psychologically incisive question: What, exactly, does it mean—and what does it do? Ondrasik brings a pragmatic, experience-based sensibility to questions of agency, effort, and locus of control.

In contemporary life, trying has become a kind of moral placeholder. It signals effort and sincerity.

“I’ll try to be there.” “I’m trying to do this project on time.” “I’ll try to call you later.” These statements sound reasonable, but they often describe an internal state rather than a behavior. They mark intention without commitment, effort without execution.

The use of the word is so commonplace that the other day, I said, “I'm trying to get my act together to write.” And I was talking about this article!

But what if we removed the word try from our vocabulary? This might sound like semantics. But that small linguistic shift forces a fundamental change in mindset from avoiding blame for possible failure to a willingness to be held accountable. And from an external to an internal locus of control.

Source: Carla Ondrasik / Used with permission

What “Trying” Signals

Research on self-regulation indicates that vague, intention-based goals (“I’ll try to…”) are far less likely to produce behavior than commitments to concrete action (“I will do X at Y time”).

The word try preserves ambiguity. When people say they are trying, they often mean they are expending mental energy: thinking, rehearsing, worrying, monitoring their emotions. Trying allows room for retreat if the outcome is uncomfortable or uncertain.

Replacing try with do collapses that ambiguity. You either took an action, or you didn’t. The mind no longer gets credit for effort alone.

The Relief of “Do”

Ondrasik’s examples repeatedly illustrate what happens when people stop narrating their intentions and start acting. A person who stops trying to be understood and instead makes a commitment to communicating clearly changes behavior accordingly. A person who stops trying to feel motivated and instead takes one concrete step: sends the email, applies for the job, leaves the situation.

What also changes is mental load. Psychologists have long observed what's known as the Zeigarnik effect: Unfinished tasks and unresolved intentions remain cognitively active, intruding on attention and increasing mental stress, while completed or decisively abandoned actions release that hold.

In other words, the mind keeps tugging at what you’re still "trying" to do.

Unfinished intentions linger in the mind, occupying attention and draining cognitive resources. Research on goal completion shows that once a plan is made or an action is taken, intrusive thoughts decrease—even if the outcome is uncertain.

Doing things provides closure that trying to do them can’t.

Agency Without Illusions of Control

Crucially, Stop Trying does not confuse doing with controlling. You cannot do “They will like and approve of me,” “This is guaranteed to work,” or “She will love me.” But you can do “Listen with curiosity,” “Submit the work,” “Speak from the heart,” and “End the relationship.”

The distinction strengthens self-efficacy, the belief that one can take actions that influence outcomes. Self-efficacy grows through observable behavior and feedback, not through internal effort alone. Each act of doing—successful or not—provides information. Trying often provides none.

The book’s emphasis is on behavior that is fully within one’s control, unburdened by fantasies of managing other people’s reactions. And though she never contrasts “Stop trying” with the popular self-help book and slogan “Let them,” Ondrasik doesn’t conflate Don’t let this consume you with Don’t bother. Where the idea of Let Them can drift toward passivity, Ondrasik demands choice. Engage, disengage, or change course—but do so deliberately and without confusing detachment with inaction.

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Removing try does not mean disengaging from effort or emotion. It means refusing to substitute rumination or hope for action. And it also means taking responsibility when you’re not actually willing to take action. Instead of saying “I’ll try”—and then apologizing later for not doing whatever you said you’d try to do—sometimes the honest answer is just No.

Psychological well-being depends on both emotional regulation and purposeful action. Passivity dressed up as wisdom, on the other hand, erodes agency. Replacing trying with doing—or not doing—restores it.

Source: Carla Ondrasik / Used with permission

A Small Word, a Large Shift

The power of eliminating try lies in the mindset-shift it enforces. Trying keeps people psychologically overinvested and behaviorally stalled. Doing accepts limits, tolerates uncertainty, insists on action where action is both possible and wanted, and it accepts that some things are not worth doing.

Stop Trying is not an argument against real effort. It is an argument against both pretend effort and wasted effort.

And it’s a reminder to say yes when we mean it—and no when we don’t.