Effort Stripping

Hey

Hope you’re okay. If not, just remember: challenge is where the growth is…

Big idea 🍉

In many ways, our modern world is a miracle. BUT... there's also a lot that isn't quite working. Much of which is the result of a mismatch between our evolved instincts and our modern environment. Let's explore one of the biggest of these...

For almost all of human history, nearly everything we needed to survive came with a cost attached. Calories had to be hunted and carried. Mates had to be courted and won. Entertainment had to be made and remembered.

As a result, we evolved to conserve effort wherever we could. When food was scarce, every bit of energy mattered, and spending it unnecessarily was a real risk.

Today, that effort has been almost entirely stripped away. Calories arrive at our door, cars ferry us around, and entertainment lives in our pockets.

But our instincts haven't changed, and so we find ourselves taking the easy option, over and over again.

This can feel good (because of our programming), BUT the problem is... effort is how we grow. Our bodies get stronger from stressing our muscles. Our minds become more resilient when we're pushed to do hard things. We’ve seen this in classrooms, right? Students remember far more after testing themselves than after rereading... despite rereading feeling more effective.

AND, the cost of all this is easy to miss. Nobody notices the strength or skill they never built... or the confidence they never grew.

Easy calories, easy dopamine... these are the ultimate fruits of modern civilisation. But in delivering them, we have inadvertently removed the very thing that made us so powerful: effort and challenge.

And so, it may well be time to start putting some of this back, on purpose (in a very careful way obviously). Which is not going to be easy... but that's kind of the point.

🎓 For more, check out this paper on why we evolved to avoid effort (and why our bodies still need it).

Summary

• Modern life has removed much of the effort required to meet our survival needs, making taking the easy option the default.

• Unfortunately, choosing the easy option means missing out on the effort and challenge we need to grow and become resilient.

• Across society, we must correct for this by deliberately pushing learners to do hard things.

Little updates 🥕

• Review of shared reading research → suggests that adult dialogue & scaffolding can support children’s cognitive development.

• Research on gestures → finds key gesture characteristics that may impact their effectiveness in supporting language learning.

• Meta-analysis on peer feedback → finds higher quality feedback is linked to improved outcomes, particularly when students received prior training.

• Study of test anxiety → argues greater negative effects among low-SES learners, but weaker or positive effects among high-SES learners.

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