What if you tried hard?
It's easy to put in the minimum effort required to get the job done, but nothing great has ever come from putting in the minimum amount of effort. I want to do great things, so I'm not interested in putting in the least effort possible.
An odd stigma exists around trying hard as if getting caught trying is cringeworthy. Cool kids don't try! They don't care about anything! There's an idea that the true talents, the real heroes, don't have to exert effort. They float from success to success without breaking a sweat, inhabiting a world that seems off-limits to you.
Watch a documentary about Lionel Messi, Jerry Seinfeld, Kobe Bryant, or Taylor Swift, and you'll see how much work they put in. How hard they tried. Practice hasn't started, but they're already there. Practice is over, but they're still there. Outworking everyone. Earnestly writing thousands of jokes, hundreds of songs.
The good news is that since most people don't try that hard, standing out becomes much easier for you! If you look around, you'll see that the world is filled with people barely exerting the minimum effort required. (And sometimes even less than that.)
