The Minimum Effective Dose.

More Is Not Always Better: The Minimum Effective Dose
I have little doubt in my mind that at some point in your life you’ve heard someone close to you wish that there was a shortcut to success; some way they could have what they desire in a shorter period of time (because we’re an instant gratification society).
This may relate to career goals, personal goals, learning a new topic and becoming proficient, having that sculpted body you saw on Instagram that you admired or any other number of things.
Now, while some influencers online like to preach about ways they can make you a millionaire or success story overnight, the truth of the matter (from people whom aren’t trying to offload their shit courses onto you) is that this just simply isn’t that case. Success, reaching a goal and becoming proficient in almost any field or facet of life requires an immense amount of determination, learning, long hours and practice.
There is however, one particular method, used by those who’ve achieved real success that YOU can use today to help propel yourself further along your journey. It’s a no bullshit method that employs basic principles founded from years of research that can from now help you if you choose allow it.
Let’s dive in.
What is The Minimum Effective Dose?
The Minimum Effective Dose can be described simply as the smallest dose of ‘X’ activity to reach the desired outcome. A great example I’ve seen used to explain this even further is that to boil water, you need only raise its temperature to 100C at standard air pressure.
Anything less the minimum effective dose will not create the desired outcome, similarly as heating the temperature of the water to anything greater than 100C (at standard air pressure) will not make the water ‘more’ boiled. Boiled is Boiled.
This theory is perhaps best translated in the theory of Law of Diminishing Returns, which states that at some point along the progress of ‘x’, adding extra input factors towards the goal will actually result in a diminishing output. This can be seen in the image below that represents the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Further down the rabbit hole…
Let’s take a look at Learning as an example of why this matters to us, and how to cut the fluff surrounding it.
Malcolm Gladwell, a Canadian journalist whom cited in 2008 that in order to become a master in any given field of your interest (Marketing, Sales, Surgeon, Graphic Designer et. Cetera.) that it will require you to invest 10,000 hours of practice/learning in order to achieve the level of master.
That target of 10,000 hours (6 hours per day over 5 years) is said to be the tipping point of where you evolve from being ordinary to extraordinary.
What Malcolm didn’t take into account was just how many of those said 10,0000 hours were spent doing Quality vs. Quantity based learning. The difference in result is dramatically different, and the results of which can drastically reduce that amount of time needed to achieve your goal of ‘x’ down to fraction, if done correctly.
Enter: Meta-Learning
Originally coined by Donald B. Maudsley in his 1979 PH. D essay (available from the University of Toronto), lays out the foundation of meta-learning, as:
“the process by which learners become aware of and increasingly in control of habits of perception, inquiry, learning, and growth that they have internalized”.
Meta-Learning (meta meaning ‘beyond’) is the task of Learning how to learn.
With the use of meta-learning as a tool, a said student of any discipline can greatly improve their ability to learn more effectively simply by having a greater awareness of how they (personally) acquire knowledge and if they were to also tactfully devise a method of learning that allows them to reach a said goal in a much shorter period of time.
This is where we can recall the notion of Quality learning over Quantity of learning. By allowing oneself to become self aware of their own personal strengths and weaknesses, one can achieve much higher levels of success in any discipline in a shorter period of time.
How can this be implemented?
For those of us with heightened goals in any given field of our interest, may it be getting gains at the gym, or learning a language, it’s easy to over-do it when it comes to practicing.
Not only that, but often times going beyond the tipping point (remember the Law of Diminishing Returns) can lead us astray from out goals, perhaps it’s because you exhaust your brain and want to sleep rather than study, or perhaps you went to heavy and for too long at the gym and now you’ve lost two days of exercise due to your muscles that feel as if they’ve been severed from the bone.
Either way, you need to find a method within this methodology that pertains to you specifically, because no one way works perfectly for everyone.
Back to the point, how exactly can it be implemented?
Well let’s consider the case for Language Learning.
First, we want to define a goal.
Goal: To become conversationally fluent in Spanish.
Now with a goal as audacious as that, you may assume that the time required to learn such a skill could take you months, even years to achieve, but if you break down the goal, to further understand it’s foundations, we can quickly get a better understanding of the work we need to do in order to achieve our goal.
Side note: it is important to remember that while your goal to achieve fluency in another language may be audacious, let’s think about your native language for a moment. Consider English for this example.
You don’t know every single word in the English, nor do you know the exact definition for all of the ones that you do know. Does this mean that you are not conversationally fluent? Of course not.
Therefore, why focus on learning every single word of another language, most of which you’ll never use, and instead focus on learning the most commonly used words in said language.
Breaking it down:
So, let’s define ‘Conversational Fluency’.
Now for some of you, it may mean different things, some may want to speak for hours with a local in their target location, some of you may simply want to have a basic, 3-minute conversation, or simply ask for directions. Either way it’s important to find ‘Your’ definition.
But, for all intents and purposes of this case, we assume that fluency can be defined as:
“The ability to have a free, and flowing conversation with a native speaker in their language, without the need to think for too long, or in hesitation to reply.”
This next paragraph has been taken from the book ‘The 4 Hour Body’, written by Tim Ferriss, which uses the basis of the Pareto Principle (80/20) method, which incorporates our Minimum Effective Dose approach to learning.
“To be perceived as fluent in conversational Spanish, for example, you need an active vocabulary of approximately 2,500 high- frequency words.
This will allow you to comprehend more than 95% of all conversation. To get to 98% comprehension would require at least five years of practice in stead of five months. Doing the math, 2,500 words is a mere 2.5% of the estimated 100,000 words in the Spanish language.
This means:
1. 2.5% of the total subject matter provides 95% of the desired results.
2. This same 2.5% provides just 3% less benefit than putting in 12 times as much effort.
This incredibly valuable 2.5% is the key, the Archimedes lever, for those who want the best results in the least time. The trick is finding that 2.5%.”
This is a fine example of not only how a goal can be broken down into much smaller, attainable parts, but it gives us a valuable look into just how little we truly require to become successful at reaching our goal.
This same principle of deduction if you will, can be applied to almost anything in your life as I have mentioned, it only requires to first do a little digging to truly define your goal.
Wrapping it up
You can take away form this, as few simple steps that can help guide you in the direction of success in your chosen goal of choice, without slaving away for months or even years.
- Define your Goal
- Break down your goal into easy to understand, easy to achieve segments.
- Understand your best learning approach (Visual, Speech, Written, Naked on a Lawn Chair…. Whatever works for you).
- Choose a time/location that favors better learning, avoiding times of chaos. Rather focus on moments of solitary, allowing you to best focus on the desired goal.
- Evaluate your progress weekly & monthly to ensure your recollection of information is sufficient, and understood.
- Revaluate with the use of a test to further understand comprehension.
- Repeat.
Added note:
A great way to gain a better understanding of your learning outcome, is to Teach it.
Imagine yourself teaching someone who’d asked you. This method put’s you on the spot and demands recollection to occur, and by teaching others, you also help to improve memory recall.
As Einstein once said,
“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
Let this serve you in your pursuit of success.
Adios y buena suerte.
