There’s a joke commonly used about woefully underpowered cars: When you put the pedal down it doesn’t go any faster, it just gets louder.

This is how I understand the concept of effort. You create in your mind a feeling of force, or pressure. Maybe you exhaust yourself a bit as proof of work. But that’s it. It has no relation to accomplishment, effectiveness, efficiency. It’s for show, if only to yourself.

You can have that experience of effort without accomplishing anything, though I’m not sure why you’d want to. Or you can do whatever you like without that feeling. If that feeling helps you feel like you’re doing something, by all means, continue. Feeling like you’re doing something isn’t nothing—it’s just not what we’ve been told.

A language is just a dialect with an army.

A culture is just a restricted, repetitive pattern of behavior with an army.