Why Does Thinking Feel Like Hard Work?

“…it is one thing to think and quite another to understand the nature of thought. Just as eagles fly without any grasp of the principles of aerodynamics and dolphins swim without understanding the physics of flotation, so too most of us think without having any real insight into the nature of thought.” — Tim Bayne

Welcome. What you’re doing right now is quite special. You’re taking squiggly black lines and extracting meaning from them. No other creature on earth can do that like you can. What’s more, you can probably achieve it with relative ease. You see the words and process them in an instant, never really thinking of the words themselves, only what they represent.

It wasn’t always easy to read, though, was it? It might be a long time ago, but when you were first learning how to do this, you would have had to put a great deal of effort into it. Different words would have been obstacles, you would have stumbled along, having to focus on the letters and how they are pronounced. It’s impressive just how far you’ve come.

Most things follow this trajectory. You learn, and the learning requires effort, but the knowledge you…