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.

No try biking up that hill without friction you can expend infinite effort but without friction you'll not get anywhere. The tire will spin and spin but with no friction you'd have no forward force applied. That is if you muscles could work without friction that might work but the spining of the chain and all the other details don't work without friction.

But I think at a more personal level truly learning and having that learning last happened because friction not because it was effortless. I honestly don't remember much about things that were effortless. Things that don't take effort can't show you what your doing wrong because it was effortless, there was no resistence to feel where you might be going wrong. I agree there is a optimal point of friction but minimization might not be that optimal point.