Layered Learning

Most attempts to learn something difficult end the same way. There is rarely a clean decision to quit, which would at least be honest. Instead there is a slow stall. The book sits open at chapter three for a fortnight. The course tab stays pinned but unclicked. The guitar goes back on its stand. Nobody declares defeat. The thing simply stops, and a vague guilt takes the place of the ambition that started it.

The usual explanation is discipline, or the lack of it. The man who stalled tells himself he is lazy, or too busy, or not really cut out for the subject. He almost never reaches the truer explanation, which is that the method he was using walked him straight into a wall and then asked him to stand there until he understood it.