“Try harder” sounds perfectly reasonable until you realize how often it is used as a substitute for actually asking what is going wrong. Of course effort matters. I am not launching an anti-effort campaign. But two people can care equally, want the same result, and need wildly different amounts of energy to get there.
For a neurodivergent brain, one ordinary-looking task can be ten tasks wearing a trench coat: start, sequence, remember, filter distractions, estimate time, regulate frustration, shift attention, and somehow remain emotionally committed to the project after opening the wrong tab and disappearing into the internet for twenty-seven minutes. Sometimes “trying harder” really means spending twice the energy to make it look as though nothing was hard at all.
This gets especially slippery when you are bright, verbal, high-achieving, agreeable, or simply very good at compensating. The polished result becomes evidence that support must not be necessary, while nobody sees the overpreparing, rehearsing, panic-fueled sprint, twelve reminders, or recovery period afterward. Masking can make the misunderstanding even worse. If you have learned to hide confusion, push through overwhelm quietly, or make the hard thing look easy, people may genuinely believe it was easy.
I know that disconnect intimately. I spent years being praised for outcomes that looked like evidence of discipline and good time management while knowing the process behind them involved procrastination, panic, last-minute hyperfocus, and some very creative problem-solving. When the result is good, people rarely think to ask what it took to get there.
Maybe effort is not the most useful question
Instead of asking whether someone is trying hard enough, I am much more interested in what is making the task harder than it needs to be. Is the first step unclear? Is the environment too distracting? Is working memory doing too much? Would written instructions, fewer steps, or more recovery time change the outcome?
Effort matters, but effort is not a moral scorecard. Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is stop demanding more of it and start removing unnecessary friction.