Someone wants to do a good job at work, to get promoted, to get a raise.
But can you try too hard?
A try hard in popular culture, I think, is someone
who is just really out there doing stuff on behalf of themselves in order to get picked for something.
A pick-me.
Like a pick-me, yeah.
Exactly.
Laura Mayer is the author of a new memoir called Try Hard, a cautionary tale of clocking in and spinning out.
I think that being a tryhard is unfortunately something that goes beyond just work.
It's less about the advancement and it's more about being addicted to the process of showing up.
It's really not being able to let anything rest.
It's like perfectionism, but it's perfectionism in the extreme, maybe.
And it's way exhausting.
Exhausting and kind of cringe.
Like, why can't these people just chill out?
And the fact is, trying to do anything without it looking effortless is embarrassing because showing
that effort is kind of going against all of the popular understandings of, at least in America,
of how we are supposed to succeed.
Minus like the rise and grind aspect, which is a whole separate side of things.
But also like it's not necessarily a bad thing.