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Why ‘Try Your Best’ May Be the Perfect Advice
What science teaches us about the value of effort and reward
Each and every year we are a human paradox. January 1st rolls around and we are ambitious. This year will be the year. We contemplate our goals and although we know the effort it takes and the effort we are prepared to forgo, we set them anyway.
“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
In a sense, we are looking our goals in the face, knowing them for what they are and not paying a blind bit of notice to that fact. Each and every year we are overly ambitious and each and every year we fall victim to ourselves.
Could this year be different?
The Amount of Effort is Calculated By Perceived Reward
Water and electricity are the same in one respect. They both take the path of least resistance. Water won’t climb all the way up a hill if it can slip through a crack. Electricity won’t run through a resistor if there is a path with less resistance. And we humans aren’t too different from that.
