The appropriate amount of effort is zero

I think a major problem with advice for a general audience is that different people need different advice. I agree with you that a path to mastery usually involves putting in a lot of effortful practice and then learning to operate without conscious effort, to let muscle memory and such take over. I think people fail at this in different ways, however. I'm sure a lot of people fall off of mastery because they mistake the feeling of effort for lack of an innate talent or the endeavor being futile, and a lot of people fail to achieve fluency because they're unable to let go of the effortful, conscious mode of thinking. Advice for either of those groups is probably going to be counterproductive for the other

That said, I do think this article frames its advice in a clickbaity way by handwaving cumulative effort while talking about instantaneous effort

> Katie Ledecky didn't put in a huge amount of effort in her training before her world-class swimming performances.

Although the training takes lots of energy and time, it needn't be driven by striving towards abstract goals. Rather the training can be a playful/fun practice for the sake of doing it well in the moment. This makes it feel easier to practice a lot, and also makes the practice more "productive" by freeing up attention from distractions of purpose and self.

It's hard to say if most elite athletes are able to do this all the time, but they probably don't have as bad a time of it as normies when it comes to physical exertion.

The most reliable way you get ahead is boring: small levels of effort, done consistently over time. You don't notice the progress day-to-day. You don't get much to brag about on social media. But it adds up.

>But don't tell me that Katie Ledecky didn't put in a huge amount of effort

Perhaps you should try reading the article, because it doesnt say that. Its a 5 minute read, although perhaps you shouldn't bother because most others dont appear to have either.

Edit: actually, I daresay the contention of the article is the exact opposite: its likely that ledecky put in the least effort out of anyone.

"Let me share my slightly unusual definition of “effort”: it’s the felt experience of expending energy beyond what an activity requires, like tensing your brow when you try to understand something, or the excess tension in your hand when you hold your phone...Using this definition, it’s clear that the appropriate amount of effort for any activity is zero."

Sustained effort is required for muscle memory to take over, at which point throughput increases dramatically.

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This is very accurate to me. In the last few years I've been learning ukulele / guitar / bass / mandolin / banjo, and it took a LOT of time and practice before I could control my muscles well enough to use less effort. When you're starting you just don't have the necessary dexterity, and it's very easy as an expert to forget about those early days, especially if you learned very young.

I learned piano starting around age 6, and I vaguely remember the first few years were spent largely on learning to control my fingers, stretch to play larger chords (as a child with fairly small hands, I couldn't stretch my hand to play an octave until around age 10 or 11), and so forth. I was learning to do this at the same time I was learning to write cursive, or hold a paintbrush, use a kitchen knife, etc - all kinds of basic childhood learning stuff.

Learning a new skill as an adult is like going back to grade school or even infancy in some cases. You can tell a small child not to grip their pencil so tightly, but until you've practiced handwriting for several years, your fingers simply don't have the control necessary to avoid using a heavy grip.

"Use a lighter touch" is fantastic advice for an intermediate or advanced student but incredibly frustrating for a beginner. Over the course of several decades of playing keyboard in bands I picked up the bad habit of playing with more force than necessary, which started to cause me problems. I had to practice playing with a lighter touch and that was actually a big help.

Flow is generally achieved when the challenge is appropriate, not too easy, not too hard.

The Inner Game of Tennis has entered the chat

I think part of this is:

- you need to have clarity on the what the goal is

- then you can adjust your effort to meet the goal

no one can tell you what your goals are.

Your definition is more correct.

I'm close to some kind of mastery with cello, and broadly we tell students to play with zero tension.

This is useful to say (often they have way too much tension and need to really dial it back), but in reality there is _some_ tension in everything:

- left hand: the fingers are basically a conduit for your back weight, but they need enough strength to stand up and _act_ as a conduit, otherwise they'd collapse. (but they needn't do more)

- right hand: weight flows from the back, down the arm, into the index finger, and all power derives from that + bow speed + how close you are to the bridge. However, the thumb needs to engage enough to counterbalance the weight on top of the stick, otherwise the bow would clumsily fall over.

The key is, as you say, doing the bare minimum.

"Let me share my slightly unusual definition of “effort”: it’s the felt experience of expending energy beyond what an activity requires, like tensing your brow when you try to understand something, or the excess tension in your hand when you hold your phone...Using this definition, it’s clear that the appropriate amount of effort for any activity is zero."

Looks like it, yes.

effort might mean going against the flow, so if you go where the resistance is the smallest that is likely your niche

of course this might need some tweaking, because if someone is really good at pickpocketing maybe some effort would put them on a much better long-term trajectory?

Same, though my problem is more about overthinking and "trying too hard" than anxiety. When I manage to relax into something it tends to go well, but getting to that relaxed state is very hard, and my natural inclination is to try harder, which usually doesn't go well.

It's like the thing of "slow is smooth, smooth is quick" when I'm trying to do something in a hurry.

A lot of folks never really learned to effectively study over the course of weeks or months. One of the keys I've learned is to give yourself enough time to soak in new concepts and for practice to crystallize in your mind. I used to get frustrated at this process, but finally in my 40s I've learned to embrace how my brain and body learn new skills.

I've recently started a new job, and I've been thrown a ton of materials and systems to study. Lots of new terms, systems, etc., and only vague ideas of where everything fits in. So here's my rough process if I'm handed a product spec for a system I'm going to be building / working on:

- Skim the entirety of whatever document / deck / codebase you've been given. Make a couple notes about things you didn't understand, and plan to look into. Maybe a couple key concepts. Not too much. You're just dipping your toes. It's going to be really annoying and frustrating and you're going to want to quit. That's OK - your brain / body are telling you you're working hard and expending a lot of energy. Think of it like lifting mental weights - it's meant to be hard work.

- Come back in a couple days and read it again, after you've done this process with a bunch of other things. You might realize this document has answers to questions you had about other things! You're just starting to make connections.

- Make yourself a reminder to check back in another week, and in the mean time go and ask your questions to the document author, your manager, your team, etc.

- By the next week, you probably understand what's going on enough to write a 1-pager for your plans; give it another week and you should be able to right a proper tech design.

Right?

Such a clear fallacy of definition in the opening paragraphs that it renders the rest of the article a pointless read.

Yes, if you arbitrarily redefine terms you can reach arbitrary conclusions.

When you are cheerfully and methodically banging your head against walls, the solutions come more fluidly than when you are in a rush.

And the more furious you are about wall proliferation more likely head banging will result in unwanted consequences.