Just do it
There are many instances where common advice can be useful when providing a convenient conclusion (see Thought-terminating cliché), though often vapid and ultimately useless. This is not a bad thing. After all, they aren’t intended to be intrinsically useful; they’re meant to address emotional states.
Usually, people give advice with the intention of wanting the resulting emotional state to improve, but the indeterminate usefulness of the advice can also potentially induce the opposite effect: it can be instead detrimental to one’s emotional state.
We’ve all heard the phrase “snap out of it” when it comes to depression and the resulting profusion of retorts directed against it after we learned more about human psychology, but why is it unhelpful? Take a similar phrase (the focus of this post): “just try”.
“Just try”? It seems ostensibly innocuous. After all, what’s the harm in trying? Either you succeed, or you fail, right? Ideally, we would think this to be the case, but this isn’t how it usually plays out in the real world.
What happens after one fails? “Try again”. Try again? What about after that? “Try again”, and again, and again. There is no realistic failure condition to be seen—one can never fail.
And if one can never fail, it’s not trying anymore; it’s just doing. Our advice turns from “just try” into “just do it”. Not as helpful, is it? It sheds the innocuous facade and reveals its true nature far too late into the deception. Sometimes, “just try” isn’t the right answer; sometimes, a different approach and strategy is needed. Running into a wall repeatedly isn’t going to solve the problem; bringing a drill will.
I see little need to justify why telling someone to “just do it” is dismissive and unhelpful; it’s no different than telling someone “your problem is that you have a problem”. Gee, thanks!
“Just try” is merely a euphemism for “just do it”; people understand that it’s useless advice, but they still want to dismiss the other party without seeming rude or without trying to come up with a plausible solution. At best, it can be interpreted as careless or aloof. At worst, it’s an insult to those who have already racked their brains for ages trying to find a way to do the thing they supposedly need to “just try” to achieve.
Closing
This isn’t to say that it’s inherently useless advice. Again, the motivation aspect of it is tangible: often, people just need a bit of a push in the right direction. The problem comes when it’s irresponsibly applied without a reasonable failure condition. If one uses the word “try”, one better be prepared for the “try” to fail at some point.
This also doesn’t mean that the failure condition should be set at the first sign of a setback, only that it should be realistic and achievable. Otherwise, the only purpose it serves is to further worsen the mood of the one seeking advice by implying that their failure is merely a lack of trying even in situations where it is not (being advised to try running through a wall instead of using the door beside it).