”Trying your hardest” - how hard is that?
Datum: 2025-01-27 08:59

There are so many things we feel we need to succeed in. The new organizational structure needs to work, the sales goal needs to be reached, the project needs to be completed, the assignment needs to be successful, you need to close the new client account, and so on. If you are the one responsible for the success of whatever it might be, you are likely to be the kind of ambitious person I often meet who has promised his- or herself, and others, that they will do ”everything in their power” for the task or project to come together.
For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the “Done!” podcast:
Constantly in a hurry
This ambition is an expression of quite an admirable engagement and a strong sense of responsibility, but for many people with this tendency, it also has a high price they inevitably have to pay. They feel that they work a lot, if not all the time, and in spite of working as hard as they can, day after day, week after week, they seldom manage to do what they had in mind and often feel they would have wanted to accomplish more. Did they really ”try their hardest”?
When you become clear, you can become ”done”
If you are responsible for several areas or projects on which you feel you need to work ”as hard as you can” to be successful, you risk feeling more than a little inadequate — from time to time or all the time — regardless of how much you work. This is so since working ”as hard as you can” is a measurement that is way too ambiguous. It is too vague partly because the expression does not imply a limit other than a somewhat extreme one: As long as you are on your feet you should be able to do more. Partly it is too vague since it is insatiable: Even if you have done more or less everything you can in a certain area, you have not done everything you possibly could in all the other areas you are responsible for as well.
If every workday feels like a constant marathon in which you are running at top speed and you seldom feel you have done enough, make it clear to yourself (if to no one else) how much ”everything you can” is for every area, project, or assignment you are responsible for. Not until you have done so will you be able to go home at the end of the workday feeling content and satisfied with your input — even if not everything is perfect in all areas or projects yet.
Do this
If you want to feel a higher level of satisfaction after completing a day at work, then do this:
- Make a list on a note or in an app of what areas of responsibility, projects, assignments, or other things you are working on right now and where you feel and believe you have to ”work as hard as you can” or ”give it all you got”.
- For every item on the list, estimate how much ”everything you can” is equivalent to this week, or rather, how much it is ”reasonable for you manage”. How? Express it in the number of hours you work. Measuring time has its limitations since time can be consumed by virtually anything, but if you are the ambitious kind of person who wants to give something all you have got, I am guessing you spend most of your time doing productive tasks. That is why we can make an exception this once and I think it is safe to measure your exerted effort in the number of hours you work.
- Now take a look at the status of the projects or areas of responsibility right now. How should you distribute your time? Which one should dominate your week? Is next week similar to this one or will you need to shift your focus then?
- For the rest of the week, register an estimate of the time you spend on the various areas of responsibility (personally, I particularly like the time-tracking app Toggle at the moment). When you reach the pre-defined limit of what is reasonable to expect from yourself, you have the right to feel pleased and that you have done what you could. You have done what you considered enough to succeed, at least for now. If the actual result was still not enough in your eyes, you might need to increase the number of hours for this area next week and reduce the hours allocated to another area.
- How would your situation at work and your experience of what you achieve change if you were able to track how many hours you spent on different areas, projects, and so on every week so that you see how much ”as much as you can” actually is and also know how much time you actually have for new engagements and assignments? Perhaps you should open a new spreadsheet and create an overview to give you the hard facts to rely on from now on?
Feeling content
If you make it clear to yourself and others what you actually mean when you say you will do ”everything in your power” and how much work that actually implies, you can experience the great feeling of having done enough often, perhaps even every day. There is no longer a lump in your stomach and your conscience is clear. What could be better than that?
What’s your way?
How have you ensured that you know if you have done enough when your areas of responsibility, projects, and assignments are so extensive that you rarely finish in a day? Feel free to email me to share your experience.
(By the way, have you tried this trick to keep your workload in check?)
There's more!
If you want more tips on how to create good structure at work, there are many ways to get that from me - in podcasts, videos, books, talks and other formats.