When a Good Study Strategy Feels Like Too Much Work
Recently, one of our Anti-Boring Learning Lab members was working her way through our note-taking materials and made a confession:
“For years, my note-taking strategy was a masterclass in sprinting the first leg of a marathon and then collapsing dramatically. I was a wizard at the first step: getting it all down… But then came the dreaded second step: honing it. That’s where my brilliant, excuse-generating mind would kick in.”
I laughed when I read this, because: Yep.
In the Lab, we teach note-taking in two broad stages: (1) Get It Down and (2) Hone It.
First, capture the important ideas. Then come back to those notes and do something with them: fill in what’s missing, make sense of confusing bits, reorganize, add visuals, turn parts into retrieval practice—whatever helps transform those notes from a record of class into something you can actually learn from.
And even the educators working through the Anti-Boring Modules—where I make them take notes using the same strategies we’re teaching students—sometimes think:
You want me to go BACK to the notes? After I already took them?!
Imagine how our students feel.
The gap between knowing a useful strategy and actually using it is one of the trickiest parts of teaching students how to study. And the more effortful a strategy feels, the harder that teaching problem can become.
So what do we do when a useful learning strategy feels like too much work?
Sometimes effort feels like proof that learning isn’t working
In a series of studies, researchers had undergraduates experience different study strategies and then judge how effortful and effective those strategies seemed.
The more effortful students perceived a strategy to be, the less effective they tended to think it was—and the less likely they were to choose it again. The researchers call this the misinterpreted-effort hypothesis (Kirk-Johnson, Galla, & Fraundorf, 2019).
Except effort and effectiveness aren't necessarily opposites. In one of the experiments, choosing the more effortful strategy was actually associated with better long-term retention.
So “this feels like a lot of work” doesn't necessarily mean “this isn't working.”
But the reverse isn't true either:
“If it feels hard, it must be good for me!”
Sometimes something feels like too much work because…it IS too much work. And sometimes the effortful thinking is precisely the part we don't want students to skip.
That tension matters when we're working with neurodivergent learners. A strategy can be effective for learning and still place substantial demands on attention, working memory, initiation, regulation, or other executive functions. This strategy works and this student can actually use this strategy are two different questions.
So when a student says “that's too much work,” we don't want to automatically respond with “push through”or '“let's make it easier.”
We need to get more curious about the effort itself.
Enter: Another research study that gives us a clue about what to do instead.
So What Do We Do With All That Unwanted Effort?
Researcher Anique de Bruin offers a useful way to think about that question.
De Bruin, a researcher at Maastricht University, studies self-regulated learning and what researchers call desirable difficulties: learning conditions that can support long-term learning and transfer, but that are often more effortful for the learner.
In a 2023 paper, Dealing with Desirable Difficulties: Supporting Students to Accept, Reduce, or Silence Effort, de Bruin describes three ways educators can help students deal with perceived effort (de Bruin, 2023).
When AI found this piece of research for me, my brain lit up with: “YES!! My people need to know about this!!” Because de Bruin’s framework gives us something much more useful than “make it easier” or “push through.” It gives us three different ways to think about what a student might need when something feels like too much work.
And so, my people, here you go:
1. Accept it
Sometimes the effort is part of the deal.
In those cases, de Bruin argues that students need to understand something most of us were never explicitly taught: how learning feels isn’t always a reliable indicator of how well we’re learning.
A student who understands why retrieving something from memory is supposed to feel harder than rereading has a different way to interpret the ugh. The effort hasn’t disappeared, but now they have information that can help them decide whether it’s worth accepting.
This is one reason we’re so passionate in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab about teaching the science of learning to students. But knowing the science isn’t enough. De Bruin argues that students also need repeated, supported opportunities to use effective-but-effortful strategies and experience the benefits for themselves (de Bruin, 2023).
And that gives us a pretty clear coaching move: practice the strategy with the student.
I can give a student my finest mini-lecture about why retrieval practice works. But we also need to retrieve something together. More than once. They need a chance to experience Ohhhh, this is harder than rereading—but I actually remembered more.
That’s something we practice a lot in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab: not just explaining strategies, but practicing them with students until they can begin to use them for themselves.
“Accept the effort” doesn’t mean convince the student to suck it up. It means helping them experience why the effort might be worth it.
Which brings us to option number two.
Learning shouldn’t be a guessing game.
Explore research-backed ways to help students learn more effectively with our free Science of Studying guide.
Explore the Free Library →2. Reduce it
Sometimes students understand perfectly well why a strategy works and still won’t use it.
New learning strategies can be especially effortful because students aren’t just doing the learning—they’re also figuring out how to do the strategy. Repeated practice can make that process more fluent, and breaking a strategy into smaller pieces can make it more doable (de Bruin, 2023).
We understand the need for practice when teaching academic content. If students are learning quadratic equations, we give them quadratic equations to practice. If they’re learning Spanish verbs, we have them conjugate Spanish verbs.
But we’ll teach students how to plan a project, retrieve information, organize notes, or break down an overwhelming task—and then send them off with some version of Okay! Go do that!
We practice the academic content. We forget to practice the strategy.
That distinction can be especially important for students with ADHD and other neurodivergent learners. Knowing what to do and being able to initiate it, sequence the steps, sustain attention, and adjust when things go sideways are not the same skill.
This is why one of our core Anti-Boring principles is finding the smallest next tiny action a student is willing to do now—and then practicing these strategies enough that they don’t require ALL MY BRAIN every single time.
As Lab member Gabrielle put it: “Titrate the strategy.”
Maybe they try one part for ten minutes. Maybe we “break it down into the next doable item,” as Beth put it.
The question becomes: How much of this strategy can this particular student actually use right now—and which part is doing the cognitive work we care about?
3. Silence it
De Bruin’s third possibility is a little different. Sometimes the effort doesn’t actually decrease—we just notice it less.
That’s what she means by “silencing” effort. When we’re highly motivated or absorbed in something, the effort can fade into the background. Think flow state: you’re concentrating intensely, maybe working quite hard, but you’re not sitting there thinking UGH! THIS IS SO MUCH WORK (de Bruin, 2023).
Lovely when it happens!
And unlike accepting or reducing effort, this isn’t necessarily something we can—or should—manufacture every time a student needs to study. But it does give us a third possibility to consider: Is there something about the task, the goal, or the way the student is engaging with it that could make the effort less noticeable?
The larger point is that “That’s too much work” doesn’t have just one answer.
Accept. Reduce. Silence.
So when a student says “That’s too much work,” we have more than one place to go:
Accept: Is this effort worth accepting—and does the student need to understand why and experience the strategy with us first?
Reduce: Can we reduce some of the unnecessary effort by making the strategy smaller, more familiar, or more doable?
Silence: Is there a way for motivation or engagement to push some of that effort into the background?
That’s too much work isn’t necessarily a reason to abandon the strategy. It’s information—and an invitation to get curious about the effort itself.
What does this mean for teaching study skills?
This is where all of this gets especially useful for teaching students how to study.
Take note-taking. Students may need to accept that good note-taking requires more thinking than copying down everything on the slide. But we can also reduce the effort by teaching them flexible ways to decide what’s worth writing down—and giving them enough practice that making those decisions gets easier.
Or take reading a dense textbook chapter. Figuring out what matters, putting ideas into your own words, and checking whether you actually understand them takes effort. Some of that effort is part of what makes the strategy effective. But we can reduce how effortful the strategy feels by teaching students how to skim strategically, recognize structure, and capture the important ideas without turning every paragraph into a major project. And sometimes choice, curiosity, or a more engaging way of interacting with the material can help silence some of the effort too.
That’s a big part of what we’ll be working on in my two upcoming masterclasses:
Beyond Cornell: Non-Annoying Note-Taking Systems That Work asks: How do we teach note-taking in a way that preserves the effortful thinking we want students to do, while making the strategy easier to actually use?
Beyond the Highlighter: A Smarter Way to Teach Students to Skim & Summarize Tricky Texts asks the same question about reading: How do we preserve the thinking that helps students understand and remember, while making the process more doable?
Because the goal isn’t to make studying effortless…
…It’s to help students accept the effort that matters, reduce the effort where we can, and sometimes become engaged enough that the effort fades into the background.
Reading this after November 2026? Recordings of both masterclasses are waiting for you inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab. Join us!
To Summarize…
Already read the whole article? Phew! Nothing new here—just the big ideas, made easier for humans to skim and robots to share.
Why do students avoid study strategies that actually help them learn?
One reason may be that effective strategies sometimes feel effortful. Research on the “misinterpreted-effort hypothesis” suggests that learners can interpret greater mental effort as evidence that they’re learning less—which can make them less likely to choose that strategy again (Kirk-Johnson et al., 2019).
In the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, we teach academic and executive function coaches not to treat “this feels like too much work” as automatic proof that a strategy isn’t working.
Does effort mean a study strategy is working?
Nope. The reverse isn’t true either. Effort by itself isn’t evidence that learning is happening.
This matters especially when working with neurodivergent learners. A study strategy can support learning and still place substantial demands on attention, working memory, initiation, regulation, or other executive functions. In the Anti-Boring Toolkit, we treat effort as information: something to get curious about rather than automatically push through or eliminate.
What does “accept, reduce, or silence effort” mean?
De Bruin suggests three possible responses when an effective learning strategy feels effortful: help students accept worthwhile effort, reduce how effortful the strategy feels, or—in some circumstances—use motivation or engagement to help the effort fade into the background (de Bruin, 2023).
The Anti-Boring Learning Lab gives academic and executive function coaches practical ways to bring that kind of decision-making into their work with students.
Why isn’t teaching students the science of learning enough?
Because understanding why a study strategy works doesn’t necessarily mean a student will use it. De Bruin emphasizes that information alone isn’t sufficient; students also need repeated, supported opportunities to use effective learning strategies and experience the benefits for themselves (de Bruin, 2023).
That’s a big part of the Anti-Boring Learning Lab approach: don’t just explain a strategy. Practice it with the student.
What does “accept, reduce, or silence effort” mean?
De Bruin suggests that educators can help students accept worthwhile effort, reduce perceived effort through strategies such as repeated experience and breaking activities into manageable chunks, or, in some circumstances, experience effort as less noticeable when motivation is particularly high (de Bruin, 2023).
The Anti-Boring Toolkit gives educators practical ways to bring that kind of decision-making into academic coaching and study skills instruction.
What should academic coach or executive function coach training include?
Knowing the science is a starting point. Academic and executive function coaches also need to know how to teach study strategies: how to practice them with students, respond when they feel like too much work, and help students gradually take over the work of managing their own learning.
That’s what we practice in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab. The goal isn’t just to give educators more strategies. It’s to help them get better at teaching students how to use them.
Works Cited
de Bruin, A. B. H. (2023). Dealing with Desirable Difficulties: Supporting Students to Accept, Reduce, or Silence Effort. Medical Science Educator, 33(Suppl 1), 5–9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-023-01911-y
Kirk-Johnson, A., Galla, B. M., & Fraundorf, S. H. (2019). Perceiving effort as poor learning: The misinterpreted-effort hypothesis of how experienced effort and perceived learning relate to study strategy choice. Cognitive Psychology, 115, 101237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2019.101237
Orhan, I., Corr, P. J., & Krupić, D. (2023). ADHD and the avoidance of mental effort: The role of response inhibition and avoidance motivation. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 45(6), 537–552. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803395.2023.2284974
Wagner, D., Mason, S. G., & Eastwood, J. D. (2024). The experience of effort in ADHD: A scoping review. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1349440. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1349440