Whenever I’m reading or studying something and it starts feeling hard, I do the opposite, I go look at something from a different domain which is different but still related to work I do but is even harder. While I’m reading that I feel grateful that I don’t have to go that deep and I get back to work with more focus than before.

Turns out this isn’t just me being strange. It’s a documented phenomenon.

What’s actually happening

The core of it is called the contrast effect. Our brains don’t judge difficulty (or weight, or price) in absolute terms we judge everything against a reference point. When we peek at the harder material, we move our internal anchor for what “hard” means. The original material didn’t change at all, but the scale did, so it gets re-rated as easier. Psychologists also describe this through anchoring and adaptation-level theory. Your baseline adapts to whatever you’ve recently been exposed to.

Baseball players use the exact same trick. They swing a weighted bat before stepping up to the plate, so the normal bat feels light. Nothing about their strength changed in those thirty seconds. Only the reference point did.

There’s a second layer too. That feeling of relief “at least I’m not dealing with that” is a form of downward comparison, comparing your situation to a worse alternative. Research links it to better mood and more persistence. So the hack stacks a perception shift on top of a motivation boost. No wonder it works.

But here’s what I also think

If I keep doing this, studying the easy thing, occasionally glancing at the hard thing to stay grounded, will the hard thing eventually start feeling easy too?

Probably yes, through three routes.

One, genuine growth: as I master the current level, I build the prerequisites the harder material assumes.

Two, familiarity: a lot of “this is hard” is really just “this is unfamiliar,” and repeated exposure makes the scary notation and vocabulary stop looking alien.

Three, plain adaptation: my baseline for difficulty just drifts upward.

But one of those routes is a trap. It’s called the fluency illusion, repeatedly skimming difficult material makes it feel familiar, and the brain misreads recognition as understanding. Recognizing terms is much cheaper than being able to use them. So “that hard chapter seems easy now” only counts if I can solve its problems or explain it without looking. Otherwise my anchor has just lost its shock value.

The Problem

This trick depends on the gap. Once the deep material genuinely becomes easy, it stops working as an anchor and I’ll need something even deeper to keep me grounded.