Henry Muhumuza

Effort feels embarrassing. I hate how much work I have to do to become anything. And the effort shaming these days makes it worse. There's this thing called "trying too hard." But most times no one is even shaming you. It's intrinsic. You just feel it in your gut: your dignity being exposed and shredded by situations. The feeling is particularly terrible with things concerning money and relationships.

Look at jobs and interviews. Pure humiliation rituals. You present yourself before a "panel," start talking about your strengths and weaknesses, why they should pick you, why you stand out. Pick me, pick me. Then you get the job. Then you wake up at 5 am every morning and carry your cute little backpack and run to your job and slave away 40 years of your life for a wage. And you have to answer to your "boss" who essentially holds the keys to your livelihood (worse in third world countries like my own).

Entrepreneurship is not so different either. You need a certain degree of sycophancy to sell your merchandise to customers or investors, especially when you're just starting out. "Buy this, it's the best, you won't regret." Clown-in-a-circus behavior!

Now social relationships. I know you'll accuse me of being unsociable after reading this. But I hate that I have to keep calling or texting to keep the flame of friendship burning. Let's not even go into romantic relationships: having to go to places and endure annoying icebreakers like "what's your favorite color?" It just feels like too much work. Or maybe you enjoy it. Forgive me then, I've used a bad example.

Recently, though, I had an epiphany which brought me a new understanding of work and effort. It dawned on me that physical reality is infused with work and effort at every level. From the molecular to the macro.

It came when I was thinking about two physical principles.

First, Newton's first law of motion: "An object will stay at rest or continue with the same speed in a straight line unless acted on by a net external force." No force—no change.

There is an energy exchange (input or output) involved in everything if you look closely enough. Consider a heavy box on the floor. It won't move unless something moves it. Same with climbing a hill. Your muscles have to generate a net upward force against gravity so you can go uphill. No energy, no net upward force, no hilltop.

The second principle is a bit harder to grasp. The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy (disorder and randomness) of a 'stand-alone' system always increases or stays constant over time, never decreasing. In order to go against this and create or increase order locally where you are, energy is needed. It just can't happen spontaneously. And even if the energy requirement is met, creating order where you are must increase disorder somewhere else in the universe.

Like water (disorderly) becoming ice (orderly) via refrigeration. This needs electricity to power the refrigerator, in turn, increasing disorder in the surrounding air by transferring the heat from the water to it.

Biological systems are another typical example of this principle. Living organisms are highly ordered systems (low entropy). They maintain this low entropy by consuming high-energy fuel (like food) and releasing waste heat and simple molecules (like carbon dioxide), increasing the environment's entropy significantly.

Cleaning your room too. Cleaning creates order (decreases entropy), but your body burns energy to do this, releasing heat, which increases the total entropy of the universe.

So if you find that you need change or order anywhere in your life, you need to put in effort and work. It's a law of the universe you cannot escape. To stop trying is to succumb to some sort of heat death of your potential.

Plus, isn't it romantic and reassuring that you are not in this alone? Molecules, cells, plants, insects, planets, galaxies—all bound by this law. Like we are all connected and in this together. So get to work!