Pushing through is culturally sanctioned. In most professional environments, it is not just accepted — it is expected, modelled by leaders, and rewarded by organisations that equate output with performance. The implicit message is that the capacity to override discomfort is a virtue.
The problem is not that pushing through never works. In the short term, it often does. The problem is the model of functioning it implies: that capacity is essentially unlimited, that discomfort is an obstacle rather than a signal, and that the appropriate response to difficulty is always more effort.
This model is wrong in ways that matter at an organisational level. Capacity is not unlimited. It is shaped by a range of factors — physiological, psychological, contextual — that vary across time and circumstance. Treating it as fixed and unlimited does not make it so; it simply means that the costs of exceeding it are not accounted for.
Discomfort is also not simply an obstacle. It is frequently a signal — information about the state of the system. Overriding it consistently does not eliminate the underlying state; it removes the feedback mechanism that would otherwise prompt a response. Organisations that normalise pushing through are, in effect, disabling their own early warning systems.
The alternative to pushing through is not passivity. It is a more accurate model of how functioning actually works — one that accounts for capacity, attends to signals, and builds in the conditions that allow sustainable performance rather than simply demanding it.
This is harder to accept than it sounds. The pushing-through model is deeply embedded in most organisational cultures, and the alternative requires tolerating uncertainty about output in the short term. But the evidence is consistent: sustainable performance requires working with the system, not against it.
Dr Stacey Savage
Psychology for Sustainable Functioning