Wanting, Doing, and Trying

These three words are misused, abused, and largely misunderstood by the tech community and entrepreneurs every day.

We have been cultured to think that wanting is some kind of pseudo-spiritual practice that provides us with super-powers and extra energy to try harder.

We have been trained (and confirmed by a small green Jedi) that trying carries with it a negative connotation, and that instead, we may only do.

We have been trained to think that doing is the undergirding structure of accomplishment, and that hustle, progress, and action are some kind of triumvirate of success.

If we think that progress comes only to those who put doing on a pedestal above all else, breaking things for the sake of “momentum”, we’ve lost our minds. If we think that wanting something badly enough leads to accomplishment, we are delusional.

Doing carries no specific value. Doing is purely a medium — the intersection of intention and motion.

Instead, we must realize the importance and depth of trying. This starts with understanding what it means to try.

I want to lose weight. I’m going to go to the store and buy all of their weight loss pills.

I want a job. I’m going to learn to code, so then hopefully a job will land in my lap.

I want to have friends. So I’m going to complain all the time about how I don’t have friends.

You may start by wanting. You may respond by doing. But you may not effectively be trying.

We fail often even though we think we are trying hard because we have been improperly trained to believe that trying hard and doing a lot are synonymous. They are absolutely not.

We focus far too little on the scientific, methodical mandate that is carried under trying. We instead attribute energy expended as the volumetric measure of try.

Trying isn’t simply doing what comes as a natural response of wanting. And in that way, our doing may fail us.

Trying is doing with the intent of understanding. Doing with the intent of an effect. Doing with the realization that trying again (, and again, and again) with a new method may be necessary.

Trying is not something that you already know how to do. You must learn to try.

We want to believe that when we set goals and encounter challenges that our grit and determination is enough to drive us, that we intrinsically know how to do the “right things” to accomplish what is necessary to meet those goals, and defeat those challenges.

Trying requires starting at a place of ignorance. You must void yourself of the thought that your trying is somehow correlated with your doing, and instead view trying as the experimental, failure-prone, iterative learning process that it is.

Those who know how to try are the ones who understand what it means to do what it takes. They are the ones who understand how to connect their want with their do.