Why friction is necessary for growth

Can I make a distinction between "friction" and "effort"?

If you're riding a bike up a hill, you can't go up without effort. But not all of your effort is actually moving you up the hill -- some of it is being lost in friction: inefficiencies in your muscles, friction in your gears and wheel and chain, wind resistance.

Similarly, you can't learn anything without effort; but it's often the case that effort you put in ends up wasted: if you're learning a language, time spent looking for content rather than studying content is friction; effort spent forcing yourself to read something that's too hard is effort you could have spent more profitably elsewhere.

Put that way, we should minimize friction, so that we can maximize the amount our effort goes towards actually growing.

Great distinction! Ideally, friction occurs at the edge of your ability instead of on tedious tasks where you learn nothing, and it's more like work.