The Backwards Law, and the Law of Reversed Effort

They say that the more you struggle in quicksand, the quicker you’ll sink, and the less you struggle, the better your chances are to get yourself out safely. Your density is half that of the quicksand. Physics says you should float. The difference is how much you struggle. The more you move, the more you panic, the more you wave your arms and legs around, the more likely you are to sink.

The trick I’ve been told is to slowly edge your way towards solid ground. This quicksand analogy is an excellent example of the fact that sometimes making progress in certain things depends on doing less. This is something called The Backwards Law — a term the writer Mark Manson coined for exactly this kind of counterintuitive principle — and it’s one of the most counterintuitive principles you’ll ever encounter.

The philosopher Alan Watts wrote in his book The Wisdom of Insecurity that ‘when you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink, but when you try to sink, you float.’ Read that again. It’s one of those statements that sounds wrong but is absolutely right. The harder you try to do something, the more it eludes you. The moment you stop trying so hard, it happens naturally.

The Backwards Law is all about doing the opposite of what you think you need to do. Sometimes it’s not what you do, it’s just the effort you’re putting in that’s the key. This is called The Law of Reversed Effort, and it’s when you notice in life that the harder you try to do something, the less likely you are to succeed. It happens all the time, and most people never figure out why.

Trying too hard is sometimes self-defeating. Often, things just take time to happen. Sometimes growth only happens organically, and things take time to heal. In life, it may be that the compounding effect of all your efforts needs the time needed to compound for you to get the results you really want. You can’t force a tree to grow faster by pulling on its branches. You can’t force healing by poking at a wound. You can’t force progress by working yourself to death.

Sometimes, faith, a little gentle persistence, and time are perhaps the only things you need to do. Trying too hard creates tension, pain, and undue stress. Getting back to Alan Watts again, he’s also quoted as saying, on this subject, ‘muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.’ Here, he’s referring to an old Zen proverb about stamping your feet up and down in a puddle and how this will only mean that it will take longer for the water to clear and for you to see your reflection.

Call it the Backwards Law or the Law of Reversed Effort, there are some things that just need time to work themselves out. Often, clarity only comes when things settle down, or maybe we just need to develop a quieter state of mind to see the way out of the brain fog that can occur in a busy mind — the sort of stillness that gets crowded out by our constant need to do more, try harder, push further.

I often tell people that the only thing we haven’t done is give it time to heal. Often it’s ironic, but the blank stare that they give me in return is what they really need to help their anxiety, too. They’re so busy trying to fix themselves that they’re making themselves worse. They’re so focused on the problem that they can’t see the solution. They’re trying too hard to get better, and that effort itself is what’s keeping them stuck. This is close to what the psychologist Daniel Wegner called ironic process theory — his finding that the harder you try to suppress or monitor a thought, the more it intrudes.

Some things in life only sort themselves out when we don’t push. We often hear the expression in life, especially in sports, where we say someone is trying too hard. In some activities, there’s a state of mind called a flow state of automatic action, composed of a mindset of effortless concentration. When you mentally push too much, your thoughts get in the way, and your performance deteriorates. You think too much, you tense up, you lose the natural rhythm. Trying too hard destroys the very thing you’re trying to achieve.

Some people have minds so full of chatter, stress, worries, problems and anxiety that they just can’t see the way out of their problems. Just remember back to a time, perhaps you lay awake at night trying too hard to get to sleep. The harder you tried, the more awake you became. The more you worried about not sleeping, the less you slept. It’s only when you stop trying, when you give up caring, that sleep finally comes.

Aldous Huxley made much the same point in The Perennial Philosophy: real proficiency, he wrote, comes only to those who master ‘the paradoxical art of doing and not doing.’ He understood what most people spend their entire lives not understanding. Effort matters, but forced effort kills results.

So it seems strange that in a part of this course where I’m discussing the concept of doing, of consistency, of compounding, of emergence, I’m also talking about a state of mind of ‘not doing’. But all I want to do is introduce this concept to you for your sanity. The message being that trying too hard at times can be counter-productive, and sometimes things take time. You need to know when to push and when to let go.

There’s a balance here that most people never find. They either give up too easily, or they try too hard and make things worse. The skill is knowing which approach the situation requires. Some things need effort. Some things need patience. Some things need you to step back and let them unfold naturally. The problem is we’ve been conditioned to believe that more effort always equals better results, and that’s simply not true.

In my practice, I see this playing out every single day. Someone comes in with insomnia, and they’re trying everything to sleep better. They’ve bought new pillows, new mattresses, blackout curtains, white noise machines, meditation apps, and sleep trackers. They’re reading books about sleep hygiene. They’re stressing about getting eight hours. They’re lying in bed wide awake, desperately trying to fall asleep, checking the clock every ten minutes, calculating how many hours they’ll get if they fall asleep right now.

They’re trying so hard to sleep that they’ve made it impossible to sleep. The effort itself is the problem. I tell them to stop trying, to give up caring whether they sleep or not — and if they’re still lying there awake and frustrated after twenty minutes or so, to get up, do something calm and unstimulating in low light, and only go back to bed once they feel sleepy again. That’s standard stimulus-control practice, the sort of thing Morin and Espie describe in the clinical literature on insomnia, and it works with the letting-go rather than against it. They look at me like I’m insane. The same principle applies to anxiety. People who are anxious about being anxious create a feedback loop that makes the anxiety worse. They’re trying so hard not to be anxious that they’re constantly monitoring their anxiety levels, which keeps them anxious. They’re putting in maximum effort to feel better, and that effort is precisely what’s keeping them stuck.

The Backwards Law doesn’t mean you do nothing. It means you do what’s needed without forcing, without straining, without desperate effort. It means you plant the seed and water it consistently, but you don’t stand there pulling on the seedling trying to make it grow faster. It means you show up, you do the work, but you let go of the desperate need for immediate results.

This is one of the hardest lessons to learn because it goes against everything we’ve been taught. We’ve been taught that hard work is always the answer, that if something’s not working, we just need to try harder. Sometimes that’s true. But sometimes the answer is to try less, to step back, to give things space and time to unfold naturally.

The skill is knowing the difference. When do you push, and when do you let go? When is effort helpful, and when is it harmful? There’s no simple answer because it depends on the situation. But here’s a clue. If you’ve been trying really hard for a long time and nothing’s improving, if you’re exhausted and frustrated and stuck, if you feel like you’re struggling in quicksand, then maybe it’s time to try the opposite approach.

Maybe it’s time to do less. Maybe it’s time to step back. Maybe it’s time to stop trying so hard and see what happens when you let go. The Backwards Law says that sometimes the answer to trying harder is trying less. Sometimes the answer to doing more is doing less. Sometimes the answer to forcing progress is to let it happen naturally.

You don’t need to believe me. Try it. Next time you’re stuck, next time you’re frustrated, next time you’re trying really hard and getting nowhere, try doing less. Try stepping back. Try giving it time. You might be surprised by what happens when you stop trying to make it happen and just let it happen instead.

This isn’t therapy. If you’re dealing with clinical depression, severe anxiety, or trauma, please see a professional. I say this as a doctor, not as a disclaimer.

The Backwards Law, and the Law of Reversed Effort

Further reading

The Point of No Return

Conditions of Worth

Decision Fatigue

Frequency Illusion

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