"You don't get your best performances by trying harder" is just another way of saying that our talents come so naturally that they don't feel like work.

Does that mean that if you're trying, you're fighting a losing uphill battle against something you'll never excel at? I think many skills are learned and must be earned with discipline. But the culture places excessive weight on excelling in specific fields that most people simply can't brute-force. Hence the prevalence of chemical assistance at the highest ends of productivity, intellectual competition, and athletics.

We probably need to place more emphasis on doing things that come naturally to us. Emphasis on doing. But also enjoy downtime and not-doing occasionally.