Published on June 13, 2026 6:13 PM GMT People often make arguments against “trying hard” (working very hard, pushing yourself to the brink, being intensely goal-directed, and so on) by pointing to the risks of burnout or of losing some kind of wholesomeness [1] . But there’s another, very simple argument against it that I have not seen anyone fully make explicit [2] , even though I think it’s very important. It goes like this: We face a lot of uncertainty about the sign of our impact. Therefore,