"I Wasn't Trying" Doesn't Fool Anyone but Yourself

One method that people have for protecting their ego is to never give full effort to things in life and hope that half effort is good enough.  They do this to have a built in excuse for failing.  It seems like a  low-risk proposition to go with mediocre intensity and just see how things work out.  However, it is anything but low-risk, it's almost guaranteed failure.

I have been guilty of this myself.  I have been a terrible slacker at many things that I have done. So I can come to you from a place of experience.  Nobody is buying it!  You may be able to protect your ego by saying "I wasn't even trying", but the result is the same you are putting out crappy results.  To the outside world, you are putting out bad results, the reasons why are not important.

You may save your ego, but you will lose the respect of those around you.  That's why I say nobody is buying it.  You are seen as unreliable and incapable.  People might give you the "you need to apply yourself" line, but what you really need is a firm kick in the pants (hopefully from yourself).  I don't care if you are better than most everyone else, working at 50% an experienced eye will know the difference between coasting and hustling.

Many of us don't want to deal with the true feeling of failure that will come over us if we give something everything we have and fail.  You will only end up with a feeling of regret,  even through all the bull you give yourself about how you could have been awesome if you really tried.  You'll say it doesn't matter to you anyway, but you'll know that's a lie.

Trying hard and failing sucks.  It proves to you and the world that you have been weighed and measured and found lacking.  However, you actually have a baseline for what you can accomplish if you give it everything you've got.  That gives you a true measuring stick of where you truly are right now.  With that, you can truly focus on what you can do and what you need to improve on.  Without it, it's all theoretical.  You can't know your true capabilities until you've pushed right up to and possibly beyond failure.

Most of all, going full tilt into something and succeeding is where the magic lies.  You'll have no regrets of things left undone or untapped potential.  You'll have the accomplishment of knowing that you did everything you could.  At this point what you've accomplished truly belongs to you. That is a great feeling.

Perhaps the great philosopher Yoda said it best "Do or do not, there is no try".