Why Does Frustration Help You Learn?

Steven Kotler says frustration while learning means a person is moving in the right direction, not that they picked the wrong path or should stop. The feeling is still awful. The direction is still right. Frustration is feedback that working memory is overloaded. Colleen Seifert at the University of Michigan found that the more frustrated someone gets during the struggle, the better the chance they later solve the problem and enter flow. The same pattern shows up when someone wants an intuitive breakthrough. More frustration, a better chance of later seeing the answer.

Learning needs a little norepinephrine. Low levels are curiosity. High levels are anxiety. With none of the chemical, learning is blocked. Struggle is still required. It is the loading phase at the front of a flow state, the conscious work a skill needs before it can be performed with little conscious interference. What gets called deep work is, in his view, another name for flow.