Challenging The Idea Of Avoiding “The Path Of Least Resistance”

Written On: Monday, January 14^th, 2019

Written By: Orion A. Webster

Something I spend a fair amount of time thinking about, is the concept that one should avoid the, “path of least resistance”. I’d like to explicitly challenge this heuristic here on the blog because I think there is a harmful flaw in the way we tend to think about what the path of least resistance means. Even though we have been sold this idea that nothing easy is capable of bearing fruit, it strikes me that this is obviously untrue if one stops to think for a few moments. Take the example of rowing a boat. It is unlikely, if you are rowing, that you are seeking out the hardest way in which to move the paddle. If the point is to travel some distance, it only makes sense to row in the most efficient, strainless way possible, in the hopes to conserve energy and avoid premature exhaustion. You may be thinking that there are also scenarios where the goal is, in fact, to become exhausted, more or less. The problem here is that even if you are training, you would still want to find the most effective way to get stronger. Surely there are ways to train that are incredibly tiring, yet yield no real fruit, and ways that are significantly easier that do in fact produce impressive results.

The problem that seems to exist with the way that we think about the path of least resistance, is that we treat the idea as if it is talking about doing something in a half-assed way in order to avoid hard work. Though I can see why it may be easy to fall into this trap, given the way we associate difficulty with value, this relationship is not really as straightforward as it is made out to be. Should you stop drinking water just because all you friends can too? Is walking suddenly less good for you despite it’s incredibly low barrier to entry? Though these examples are somewhat silly, the point is that just because something is abundant or easily accessible does not mean that it can’t also be extremely valuable, and just because something is incredibly difficult doesn’t mean it is actually worth the investment of resources.

The reason that I think breaking the spell we’ve cast on ourselves regarding the danger of the path of least of resistance is important, is because effortlessness and achievement with the minimum necessary moves is something to be admired not disdained. The fact that someone beats another chess player in a minute is not something to be dismissed because it is quick and easy but rather investigated to understand the underlying competence required to achieve the feat. It has been said for a long time that mastery is what you get when there is nothing left to subtract, and in order for more people to step into a realm of moving less and getting more, we have to stop fearing making things easy rather than difficult. Certainly the goal can’t be to simply keep running more miles at the hopes of getting in shape as there is only so much time in the day, and the body can only take so much. We have to be able to find smarter, more productive ways of problem solving moving forward, which in my view, requires dispelling the myth that effortlessness means stagnation in life, and perhaps most importantly, is instead actually a sign of unconscious competence.