Can effort be the thing that's wrong?

Yes — and this is the part of Daoism that sounds like mysticism until you have watched someone competent work.

Wu wei is usually rendered non-action, which is misleading. Non-forcing is nearer. The classic illustration is a butcher whose blade never dulls because it goes where the joints already are; he is working hard and straining at nothing. The contrast is with effort applied against the grain of a situation, which produces exhaustion and, characteristically, worse results.

Applied to work, the claim is that a great deal of what tires you is not the task but the friction of forcing it — the meeting you are trying to steer, the resistance you are pushing through, the version of yourself you are maintaining while doing it. Some of that friction is the job. Some of it is you, and the two feel identical from inside.

The obvious objection is that this is quietism dressed as wisdom, and it is a real risk. Sometimes force is exactly right.

But notice what it does to the Stoic answer. Epictetus asks you to govern your judgments, which is one more thing to be doing. Lao Zi suspects the governing is itself the strain — that trying not to try is the last knot, and the hardest.