Use human Means as if there were no divine ones, and divine as if there were no human ones... A masterly rule: it needs no comment.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
The rule joins two attitudes most people split. In your effort, act as though the entire outcome rests on you: prepare fully, work hard, leave nothing to chance or fate that your own hands could have secured. But in your expectation, hold the result as though none of it were in your control: do the work and then release the outcome, because so much of what follows depends on things you cannot command. This is the discipline of maximum effort paired with equanimity about results. It is danger-flagged for a mild reason: "as if everything depends on you" can slide into "the end justifies any means." It does not. The means stay ethical even when the effort is total, and it is only the outcome you are entitled to surrender.
Practice
- Give total effort as though the outcome rests entirely on you; prepare and work as if nothing will be handed to you (maxim 204's patient industry carries it).
- Release the result once the work is done; hold outcomes lightly, because most of what follows is beyond your command (maxim 211's equanimity).
- ETHICAL LINE: "as if everything depends on you" licenses maximum effort, never any means; the effort is total and the ethics are non-negotiable, and the outcome is the part you surrender.
Use this when
- Use this facing anything high-stakes and uncertain: full preparation, then peace about the part you cannot control.
- Use it against both anxiety and passivity; the anxious over-grip the result and the passive under-do the effort, and this corrects both at once.
Ignore this when
- Don't let "all depends on me" justify cutting an ethical corner; total effort is the licence, not total means (this maxim's own line).
- Don't use "release the outcome" as an excuse for slack effort; the surrender is of the result, never of the work.
A picture of it
Facing a make-or-break pitch, a founder prepares as if the entire result rests on her, rehearsing every answer, closing every gap, leaving nothing to luck she could have removed by work. Then, walking into the room, she lets the outcome go, because the decision is now in hands that are not hers. The full preparation gives her the best possible shot; the released outcome keeps her calm enough to actually use it. Whatever the panel decides, she has neither under-worked the effort nor over-gripped the result, and she never once considered winning it by a means she would regret.
Work as if it all depends on you; rest as if none of it does. Total effort, clean means, surrendered result.