Effort or Simplicity- Is Effort really the only Normal?

Before entering the education system, children approach life with a joyful simplicity which allows them to naturally learn and acquire new skills. For example, motor skills such as learning to grip a pen, taking our first step, saying our first words, getting dressed, and drawing a picture along with foundational skills like tying ones shoelaces. When observing a child, there is an ease in how they naturally go through the process of ‘trial and error’ to pick up the new skill. There is no rush or drive, and instead of it being effort-full and arduous, there is a simplicity to this way of learning.

Then we enter the education system, a system built on effort.  The whole education system is designed to draw us into effort, teaching us that effort needs to be called upon to achieve any task and is the guaranteed marker of ‘success’. We go from a natural process of learning that is taken in the stride of any small child, to a system that puts us into a time-pressured reality which inevitably asks us to go against the natural simplicity that we learnt before entering school. 

From the moment we start school, and even earlier, we are taught to put effort into every piece of learning that is presented to us, starting from the beginning when we learn how to read, write and count. The message conveyed is that the more effort you make, the quicker you will learn and the better result you will get. In some schools, grading is given for effort. Essentially, the systemic structure that is the current model of education is founded on the ever-shifting sands of effort, with a daily dose of copy and repeat on speed dial.

In addition to this, the system is also created so that all employees also draw on effort to do their job correctly. From cleaners who only have fifteen minutes to clean a whole classroom, including carpets, windows, desks, whiteboards, and chairs, to the teachers who have an increasingly complex administrative loading, along with marking and planning to complete in limited amounts of time. Equally many leadership teams are under the circulating media and political pressures of various quality assurance bodies to meet set targets and outcomes within specific deadlines.

If effort is the only way to accomplish anything, and given that education is based on preparation for life and learning the skills that we take into life, where has it ever been written that we need to be driven, forceful and ‘effort-filled’ in order to do life properly?

Have we considered, if a developing child does not need to use effort to say their first word, why would an entire societal system tell us that the only way to learn is through applying effort?

Many aspects in the philosophy of learning refer to the innate joy in learning. The latest research on the brain indicates that a ‘calm mind’ is what best facilitates learning.

And yet currently the entire structure is founded on its antithesis…

Through these systems, we are being inducted into a life based on effort, setting us up to forget how we naturally learnt at the start of life before going to school. We are instructed to normalise effort as a means to getting things done, especially when we want to achieve a certain outcome. And why not? What is actually the problem with ‘effort’ when it is the driving force behind so many successful people?

The Impact of Effort

Apart from the strain that effort puts on our physical body as we drive it against its natural flow and movement, there is also the impact that it can have on our well-being and mental health as we compress ourselves into a mentally concentrated state that shuts out the world simply in order to complete a task. Clear examples of this are seen daily in the furrowed brow of the university student completing an assignment and in the corporate CEO peering into a screen to assess the relative success in achieving preset sales targets.

Work, study and completing tasks have become synonymous with drudgery, struggle and mundanity, creating the need for time off, time out, holidays and a multiplicity of other rewards of whatever it takes for one to gain relief from the arduous work that takes up the majority of what constitutes our working life. This perpetuates the momentum of life as no more than a series of constant ups and downs, struggle and reward and effort followed by time off. A normalised marker of the ‘functionality’ of our current society.

Industries have been built around this model of life with its inbuilt management strategies. After putting in all that effort, we deserve our reward, albeit a holiday, a few hours in front of Netflix, a few glasses of wine, a crazy night on the town, or plugging into our favourite game.

Have we made it okay that a huge percentage of life is filled with drudgery and struggle, as long as we get our reward at the end?

 Is this normal life actually normal?

The child in their early stages of development is constantly in the process of learning, yet they maintain a light joyfulness throughout. How often do you see a child taking their first step and then needing time out to recover from the effort they put in? They are onto the next step and the next and there is no need for a ‘reprieve’ from the struggle.

Is it possible that without these societal systems, including the education model, that take us

away from the natural way of learning by inducting us into patterns and habits of effort and reward, all our life could be a consistent flow of lightness and simplicity, even while we are working and studying?

A question that needs no effort to answer!