The Chinese Finger Trap Of Taking Action

As much as trying too hard is counterproductive, you'll first have to try hard, sometimes for a long time, before you stop trying and let the magic happen.

Magic here, as in getting more for doing less.

Think of it like learning to ride a bike where at first you're gripping the handlebars tight, wobbling everywhere, fighting to stay upright. Then once you stop forcing it and find your balance, suddenly you're gliding effortlessly.

Somehow, this latter stage is basically your subconscious mind taking over after all that practice and doing naturally what you struggled to do consciously.

Of course, it's only magic from the outside observer's pov too.

We're more drawn to results than processes, the former stands out more because it gives us instant gratification and clear proof of success compared to the slow, messy work of getting better at something day by day.

What makes this even more interesting is that you can't skip the struggling phase. You can't just decide to "not try hard" from the beginning and expect the magic to happen. Your brain needs all those wobbly, frustrating attempts as raw material to do its cooking.

It almost never works for me to take the route of forcing outcomes through sheer willpower alone even though sheer willpower alone is the main recipe to push through during the hard phase.

It's kind of similar to this phenomenon of needlessly getting hurt when you care too much and having almost everything seem to come to your doorstep, so to speak, when you stop caring at all about impressing others or meeting their expectations.

My friend often jokes that he doesn't want to play this tricky game of knowing when to push and when to ease up because he never can tell when to shift gears in a way that's natural rather than calculated.

If you want to see reality just as it is and this is one of those inevitable aspects of how things actually work, then it doesn't require having a sixth sense to notice when you're fighting the current instead of flowing with it.

Sensing The Current

You can often tell you're fighting the current when a task feels like pushing a boulder uphill despite your best efforts. Everything feels way harder than it should and while you're moving forward, but it's exhausting and something feels wrong about the whole thing.

This goes back to the idea of sequencing. A wrong sequence is putting the cart before the horse or chasing the egg before it hatches and then wondering why nothing feels right.

The whole thing also reminds me of those Chinese finger traps.

The harder you pull, the more stuck you get. Relax your grip and suddenly your fingers slide right out.

Source

In a different way, that's practically the real lesson here.

Effort has its place, but so does knowing when to step back and trust the process you've been building all along.

There's something freeing about realizing you don't have to force every door open.

Sometimes the best move is to stop pushing and curiously see which doors were meant to open easily.

Again, there's no magic in working less. The magic only comes in working smart enough to know when less actually becomes more.


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