Separate intrinsic, extraneous, and schema-building load in a learning task.
The reframe: difficulty is not one thing. Some difficulty teaches; some difficulty only burns attention. Three Loads Intrinsic load is the natural complexity of the thing you are learning. Extraneous load is avoidable friction: clutter, split attention, unclear instructions, irrelevant examples, and interruptions. Schema-building load is the useful work of connecting concepts into a pattern. The Triage Move When a task feels hard, do not immediately conclude that you are bad at it. Ask which load is actually rising. Keep the hard thinking. Remove the noisy setup. The Professional Test A clean learning block names one target, uses one primary…
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