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Learning something new is satisfying but hard. In fact, if it’s not hard enough, we won’t do a very good job of learning because we get bored. But if it’s too hard we also don’t learn – we get disheartened.
This explains why, on those rare occasions we do get round to learning something new, we opt for something at the fringes of our ability. This sweet spot, researchers report, is called the “Goldilocks zone”, where learning progresses most quickly. This was worked out from research into how newborn babies avoid spending time on things that are either “too simple” or “too complex”. Long before they can understand the story of Goldilocks, babies appear to have mastered the heroine’s art of decision-making.
However, those of us who prefer cold hard stats might like to know the optimum level of difficulty for expanding our horizons. And it turns out the answer is 85.
New research argues that optimal learning is achieved when we face a task at which we have an 85% accuracy rate. Training at this level dramatically improves the rate of learning. The bad news is that this magic formula is calculated on the basis of training an artificial-intelligence algorithm. However, there are grounds to believe it applies to our brains as well.
So, going for something that you’ve got an 85% chance of getting right seems good advice for anyone taking up a sport or computer game. It’s less useful for politicians, who only get one go at winning an election or not stuffing up Brexit.
• Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Read more at resolutionfoundation.org
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