ADHD: The Lie of “Just Try Harder”
Hunters don’t need to try harder. They’ve already tried harder than most people ever will. What they need is truth.
Hunters hear the phrase “just try harder” so often that it begins to sound like background noise.
It shows up in classrooms, workplaces, relationships, and even therapy offices. It’s offered as encouragement, as accountability, and as common sense. If something isn’t working, the assumption is simple: more effort will fix it.
For Hunters, this advice is not just unhelpful. It’s destructive.
The idea that effort automatically produces results assumes a nervous system that responds linearly to pressure. Farmer’s nervous systems are built around this assumption: apply consistent effort, get consistent output; miss the mark, add more discipline.
Hunter nervous systems, however, don’t work that way.
Effort for a Hunter is expensive. It requires overriding instinct, suppressing curiosity, and forcing attention onto low-signal tasks. Doing this occasionally is possible, but doing it constantly drains the system. Over time, the cost compounds.
So when Hunters struggle and are told to try harder, what we hear is that the pain we’re experiencing is proof of insufficient character.
We try harder anyway.
We stay up later. We push through exhaustion. We shame themselves into compliance. We adopt productivity systems designed for other minds. From the outside, it can look like determination. From the inside, it feels like self-erasure.
The lie at the heart of “just try harder” is that all effort is interchangeable.
It isn’t.
Effort aligned with the way a Hunter’s mind is organized feels energizing. Effort applied against that organization, however, is simply corrosive. One builds capacity, while the other burns it.
This is why Hunters can show astonishing persistence in some areas and complete paralysis in others. When effort connects to meaning, novelty, or urgency, it’s sustainable for us Hunters. When it connects to monotony, surveillance, or abstract obligation, though, we can collapse.
This isn’t a failure of will: it’s just biology.
The “just try harder” narrative also ignores context. It treats performance as a personal trait rather than an interaction between each person and their environment. If someone can’t function in a given system, the system is assumed to be fine, so the person defective.
Hunters internalize this deeply, to our own detriment. We begin to see every struggle as proof we’re broken. We stop trusting their signals. We keep applying pressure long after our nervous system has begun to shut down.
Eventually, effort stops working altogether.
This is often the moment Farmers point at us and call out our “laziness.” In reality, it’s a form of protective withdrawal. The system has learned that effort leads to pain, not reward, so it disengages.
What Hunters need in these moments isn’t more pressure, it’s permission to stop forcing.
And, tragically in our culture, that permission is rare.
Instead of asking “What if the system is wrong?” our culture doubles down. More discipline. More accountability. More monitoring. More consequences. These measures might increase compliance temporarily, but they accelerate burnout.
Hunter recovery usually begins with a radical reframe like the one I offer here and in my books about ADHD. It requires the realization that effort itself isn’t virtuous, that suffering isn’t proof of commitment, and that exhaustion isn’t a moral badge.
From there, a different question emerges: “Where does effort actually work for me?”
This shifts the focus from quantity to quality, from endurance to alignment, and from forcing to designing.
Hunters who stop trying harder and start trying differently often see dramatic changes. Energy returns. Focus sharpens. Confidence rebuilds. Not because they became more disciplined, but because they stopped waging war against their own nervous system.
This doesn’t mean abandoning responsibility; it means redefining it. Responsibility becomes choosing environments, rhythms, and roles that don’t require constant self-violation.
The lie of “just try harder” persists because it’s simple and morally satisfying. It lets systems avoid change. It keeps blame neatly contained within individuals. But it doesn’t produce health; instead, it produces compliance until collapse.
Hunters don’t need to try harder. They’ve already tried harder than most people ever will. What they need is truth.
The truth is that effort only works when it’s aligned with how a nervous system is built to engage the world. Anything else isn’t grit and grind.
And grind always breaks something in the end.
We need to build space away from the perceived disadvantages we endure and turn to developing and celebrating the advantages of being hunters.
An example: I have a long history of dental problems and I focus way too much on whether I am doing enough dental care and feeling guilty that I am not doing enough and regularly telling myself it’s my own damn fault if all my teeth fall out. Then I switch to having a stiff upper lip as I console myself with the thought that a lot of people survive just fine without them. I try to pay extra attention to the hygienists who advise me but when one told me several months ago, with a sigh I interpreted as sympathy for my future trauma, that I should give up being gentle with my teeth and just dig in there and scrub, I panicked and have been
wondering how much longer I would be able to hang onto them.
- pause to just roll my eyes at all that hunter thinking -
Now the good part. I went to a new hygienist a couple of weeks ago. When I told her I struggle with the routines of dental care because of ADHD. It was like her focus broke and she started back with a new approach. She addressed an issue other hygienists seemed to ignore and came up with three different hacks for me to try. She warned me they weren’t in any textbooks - they just came off the top of her head. Then she told me she had ADHD. I trusted her instantly and have dropped all anxiety and guilt tripping myself. They seem to be working but the important part is that I know she’s all in and her brain can see through all the unnecessary embellishments the farmers have laden a simple procedure with . She also sussed out my anxiety so she shook a tooth and assured me they were solid and good for the long haul.
It makes me want to run out and insist on a hunters only healthcare operation.
Just a small (huge to me) sample of what we have to offer.
"Just Try Harder" is the ever present task-master with the cattle-prod in my head that has me spiraling out of control in response to this Administration's violent intolerance of anything or anyone that doesn't conform to their sensibilities. I feel a heavy burden of guilt for failing Ian, myself, the other musicians and all the other "hunter" and "farmer" minds that might have been successfully reached and brought together. Just contemplating what feels like an insurmountable task is paralyzing. Where does one start?
Thank you for today's post! If I could get this kind of insight from a therapist I would be in therapy right now. I've read many self-help books over the years and have experienced some benefit; but the insight you offer about ADHD, might have made all the difference; had I even known it was a thing. I cultivated an aura of performative confidence and ran from relationships, and opportunities that might reveal how little I was valued at home. Forever trying to conceal my shortcomings for fear that at the first sign of weakness, I would be held in the same contempt I inspired in my own family. The pursuit of acting, singing and yoga were a means to access my inner neglected child and learn to feel comfortable "in my own skin". But the most important thing needed, remains to this day, elusive; the ability to delegate responsibility to others without losing the only means of expressing my "truth".
I just put your book, "ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World" on-hold with our on-line public library for Ian and me to read in our Kindles; and was able to borrow your "The War on Voting" and "The Edison Gene" to tide us over. We've listened to your radio show from time to time when it was convenient; and only recently realized you were right there on YouTube, and that we can watch you anytime. Wow! Great music! Great commentary! Perhaps with your book, I can manage not to crash and burn before being able to finally find a way lend my efforts to "the cause". It is helpful to know that others understand the paralysis one can experience when trying to force themselves to go outside of their skill set, agonizing over "what they would have, could have, should have done". I like brainstorming or performing with other creative people and working on creative projects at home, but often feel too broken and isolated to escape my "frozen state". I find reciprocal working relationships based on respect and cooperation, energizing; while on the other hand, hierarchical pecking-orders are, for me, enervating and unsatisfying. Dominate-or-be-dominated dynamics make me feel like I have been compelled to perform in someone else's soap opera and I don't care for either role. I should be sleeping, but clearly needed the vent; thanks for the outlet and for sharing your insights with this grateful reader and listener.