As someone who learned English mostly from entertainment or practical needs (online, living in a non-English speaking country), and never really spent much time "learning" rules beyond 12 — no more than my birth language, which I statistically mastered — I very much disagree, if you stop there. This is the old view of learning, and it's just wrong cognitively (neurologically).
Struggling is feeling "under", less than, overwhelmed, and it brings fear or anger as primary emotions — red signs that this isn't a good path. By that point, you've switched a lot of attention away from the problem to focus on saving yourself, because genetic legacy is funny like that.
If you're enjoying however, you're learning to the best of your abilities, cognitively.
This isn't to say that the greatest games aren't hard at times. Difficulty can and should be enjoyable (it means you're in the sweet spot for improvement).
This isn't to say that enjoyment and learning are related in general, beyond the former enabling the latter in specific contexts. But when you're struggling, you're indeed not learning, you're stuck; what you need is a new teacher, a new way to understand the thing, which may be yourself — at which point you begin to "play" with it as we say it (words carry all the answers we need, don't they?)
However it's done, learning feels very good, like this inner "win" or "eureka" feeling. If you're struggling, you've failed. Already. You're in above your head. Even understanding would be partial and based on weak prerequisites, it's doesn't bode well for the next chapter, or the next task. Difficulty and pain are hard, but the good kind of hard, the one that teaches you, when pain becomes gain; it's a well known "truth" of life and the body by athletes, and the mind works just the same.
In fact, the learning itself happens afterwards, when you sleep: maximum learning is enabled by sleep in most mammals apparently. Who would have thought the most active learner in class is the one dozing near the heater, haha.
I agree with you. I had similar experiences of an unexplained smooth euphoria and finding new angles as a useful tool for progress.
I do not buy the distrust of negative emotion. There are keys to the kingdom hidden inside fear and anger. Talking those feelings out and getting to the driving principle underneath them has been worth it's weight in gold.
The relevance realization pathway you describe is important, the successive eurakas are valuable. But when you go off into the unknown that is not structured like a language or a school topic, the Eurekas are several or more steps apart. You need to cope with the overload to grow your output. You are learning to deal with a character challenge.
I think the balance between being vulnerable with your limitations and fears whilst stimulated enough to push to the limit of your competence and minimize flaw in your output and the sword and shield to performance.
High speed learning is different to performance. It is to live on the boundary between being a fool and wise. Struggle is no issue, only credibility matters for truth seeking.
It seems I was too hasty in writing my view, because yours is much better worded and I agree wholeheartedly. The only difference seems to be meta: I indeed consider overcoming struggles a form of learning; but you're learning that (to overcome struggles, to push your character), it takes precedence over the underlying topic in my mind. But that's a very minor point, unimportant.
On the "distrust of negative emotion", that's a very good point. I very much believe that emotions are but the body's language, neither good nor bad, just informational. Fear, anger, sadness are powerful drives ("energy" in some circles), warnings too, and one should certainly listen to — but not be driven by — one's emotions.
I essentially mean to warn against two weaknesses that bit me back years down the line:
- partial learning, more mechanical than understood, typically because of weak foundations (and "struggling" is often a sign of that for me). I usually need to go one step back and "clean it" closer to 100% to unlock the previous struggle — I'll confess I still apply my good old math method to do dozens if not hundreds of exercises until something becomes automatic). For instance if past 1 chapter I still don't understand a paragraph of what I'm reading, I'll humbly admit it's too high level and take another book more suited to my level — and try to really ace it, knowing the steepness of following learning curve.
- (in the case of real difficulties to learn, prolonged, spanning multiple topics, etc.) failing to see the elephant in the room, typically because it's unrelated to learning, and that's pretty strong an obstacle in social settings like school, teams, etc. Imposter syndrome, health issues, and all that. Essentially, the idea that however difficult and overwhelming, learning should never feel "bad", like nauseating or abnormally tiring or depressing. Trying to switch on some "playful" mindset and seeing how that goes is a good indicator for me: if I can't even play, the issue is probably not the topic, but myself — cue break, food, meditation, coffee, talking, philosophy, whatever but fix the machine (me) before attempting to work it out more.
This is really about academic style or skill learning, classic lectures + exercises with teachers, online trainings, reading a book, practicing, etc. Life, more generally, is very much like you wonderfully describe.
Partial learning, lack of foundation. 110% agree that is a problem that happens to me, even recently. First principles are so important.
Yeah the mysterious room elephant. Similar to the nuggets of gold underneath fear or anger, but not the same. I don't have a solution to that either. It seems we can only work so much and getting the preparation but also the supply to meet our need demands lined up so we can fulfill them consistently and keep work performance up, is a big life problem.
Using play as an indicator for unmet needs is interesting. I find myself alternating between work and play, but they are clearly defined as two separate tasks. And yes when I play it becomes much easier to prioritize getting my needs met than under the gun of work.
On the topic of positive emotion. Supposedly most of the positive emotion we get in life is in the pursuit of a goal. That may explain why we do best at the things we enjoy and the necessity of positive emotion for work. Maybe we have to balance the driving power of positive emotion with the crushing weight lifting negative emotion that comes from the challenge of working (and life in general). Too enjoyable and it's too easy, you're not working at your limit. Too negative and you're dying, you're likely to under perform but also not hit your target. Hmm interesting. I appreciate your post it put me in a mindset I had not explored in a while.
The feeling is mutual, you piked my interest. Thanks for the food for thought.
About positive emotions in work, my personal take-away — took me two decades to figure this out, but I think it's really true:
The goal is not to try really hard to always do what you love.
It's about trying really hard to always love what you do.
(Now or ever.)
I could write a book about why and how but this is probably not the place. One key though is exactly this playful mindset, it lets us redefine, in thought only, how we feel while doing something. We can always at least choose to love our effort, our doing it, try to mini-game quality or production — whatever makes it easier and ourselves better in one fell swoop.
Well I saw a talk by a designer woman who put out the massive oversized text wrapped across mall walls at escalator junctions and whatever else in the 80s.
She described her most productive work in life as being a form of "serious play". That has stuck with me and now you're saying something similar too.
Struggling is feeling "under", less than, overwhelmed, and it brings fear or anger as primary emotions — red signs that this isn't a good path. By that point, you've switched a lot of attention away from the problem to focus on saving yourself, because genetic legacy is funny like that.
If you're enjoying however, you're learning to the best of your abilities, cognitively.
This isn't to say that the greatest games aren't hard at times. Difficulty can and should be enjoyable (it means you're in the sweet spot for improvement).
This isn't to say that enjoyment and learning are related in general, beyond the former enabling the latter in specific contexts. But when you're struggling, you're indeed not learning, you're stuck; what you need is a new teacher, a new way to understand the thing, which may be yourself — at which point you begin to "play" with it as we say it (words carry all the answers we need, don't they?)
However it's done, learning feels very good, like this inner "win" or "eureka" feeling. If you're struggling, you've failed. Already. You're in above your head. Even understanding would be partial and based on weak prerequisites, it's doesn't bode well for the next chapter, or the next task. Difficulty and pain are hard, but the good kind of hard, the one that teaches you, when pain becomes gain; it's a well known "truth" of life and the body by athletes, and the mind works just the same.
In fact, the learning itself happens afterwards, when you sleep: maximum learning is enabled by sleep in most mammals apparently. Who would have thought the most active learner in class is the one dozing near the heater, haha.