At some point, we became surrounded by "effort."
When a box office flops, the director drags the actors out to cry about how hard and painstakingly they worked. When a celebrity startup goes under, the founding team goes on a show to reminisce about the late nights they spent coding back in the day. Even a giant like DingTalk (Feishu's competitor) has teams staring at the lights of the rival building across the street, churning out a ten-thousand-word epic called Inside the Ding (a play on "inside the chat").
This simple and crude logic of effort aligns with the values we've held since childhood. Its most cunning aspect is that it can never be wrong. As long as the result hasn't materialized, you can always put in more effort.
We seem to have accepted this strange criterion: before doing something, we don't ask whether it has value or whether the method works—we only ask if we're willing to give endlessly and compete. It's as if the more grueling the work, the more inherent value it must have.
But in the business world, does this logic really hold?
The market does not pay for sweat.
Imagine you're at a market buying water chestnut cake. You don't know how the vendor rises early and works late to cook fresh water chestnuts. You only see that the cake has a yellowish hue, tastes sweet, and has the fragrance of water chestnut, so you deem it a qualified cake.
The next stall also sells water chestnut cake, but this vendor isn't as "hardworking." He uses pre-made water chestnut powder and adds a bit of canned water chestnut, finishing the entire process in an hour. To make the product sweeter, he adds a touch of food technology.
When you take a bite, you think the second cake tastes more authentic. Even more, because the second stall sells it at a higher price, you assume they use better ingredients.
This is the unglamorous business world: Consumers have no obligation to pay for the sweat behind the product. The market only prices the final result.
What are we actually trying to escape with "effort"?
Effort is a choice that looks hard but is actually easier—we often use it to replace thinking.
Because thinking often means negating yourself. You might have to admit that the product has no demand, the project's direction is wrong, a certain skill is rapidly depreciating, or the business model you're familiar with is being phased out by new approaches.
These are very painful conclusions. In contrast, burying your head in hard work is much more comfortable.
Regardless of whether it's right, just write 10 more articles. Doesn't matter if they're good, just send out 100 more resumes. No need to consider whether the plan works—just make another version. As long as you keep busy, your brain can avoid facing the question that truly kills you:
Is what you're doing even useful?
In a growing market, use "effort" to justify hitching a ride on the market's momentum. In a shrinking downturn, use "effort" to excuse your wrong choices.
Thinking of a new path means negating past value, but as long as you stay "hardworking," you remain morally unassailable.
But this kind of effort will only make you more miserable.
The more you invest in something, the harder it is to walk away. You can turn around in two or three days, but if you've been working hard for two or three years, admitting failure becomes a question of self-worth. You start to fear and shrink back—you cannot negate your past sacrifices.
So you have to keep going, using new effort to prove that the past effort wasn't wasted, using next year's hard work to explain why this year yielded nothing.
Effort holds your choices hostage. You maintain a demand that doesn't exist, a project with no profit, or turn yourself into an old craftsman and call it craftsmanship.
You're not solving problems; you're just maintaining your past self.
So-called involution is exactly this: products are severely homogenized, there's no patience to dig into user needs, and the only competition left is who can be cheaper, deliver faster, or outlast the other.
When competition reaches this stage, effort no longer builds an advantage. It just makes you do the same thing ten thousand times. You'll be more skilled than someone who's done it ten times, but the market won't pay you a penny more just because you've done it ten thousand times.
You think you're getting better and better, but the market sees just another ordinary, unremarkable commodity.
Effort will not correct a wrong choice.
I'm not opposed to effort. When the direction is verified, the method works, and the market has enough room to grow, effort is certainly valuable.
The problem is that we always put effort first and push the most important value judgment to the very end—or even discard it entirely.
True effort should be an amplifier that magnifies returns in the right direction. It cannot prove whether something is worth doing; it can only prove that you have already put a lot into it.
So, before you ask yourself, "Can I persist a little longer?" stop and cool down. Figure out whether you are creating new value or just maintaining your own dignity.
If the answer is the latter, then stop. Failure is not shameful.