Is effort or is repetition making the difference? Consuming massive amounts of digital content guarantees a shallow exposure to a lot of topics, but “effort” co

Is effort or is repetition making the difference? Consuming massive amounts of digital content guarantees a shallow exposure to a lot of topics, but “effort” could just mean repeating and manipulating the same topic long enough to make it stick longer than others. For me, decades ago I learned how to mechanically learn hundreds of english words per day by simply writing each word repeatedly on 4 lines of a large notebook. With each writing my mind would mechanically repeat the word, the translation, the spelling. In an hour I could be done and move on to more fun stuff, knowing my mind has effectively retained a bunch of new language. Mental effort = none. Repetition and manipulation of the knowledge counts more than passive consumption, but it doesn’t need to be a lot of effort.