A way of making an argument is to craft a statement that at first shockingly contradicts a basic dictionary definition of a word but at a closer look highlights a characteristic you want to bring to reader’s attention, creates a finer distinction between vaguely similar terms. It’s probably the oldest form of clickbait, and perhaps the most useful one—when done correctly, it provides a lot of food for thought in a single sentence, and can present an old truth in a catchy way that is more likely to be internalised by the reader.
For example, “you should not spend effort to achieve something” is a weird thing to say at first. It poses a paradox and invites the reader to experiment: let’s pretend we can’t spend effort; but we can still do things, we can spend energy, we can end up having achieved something. Are there examples of how people do things and spend energy, but without spending effort?
This highlights a particular elusive quality of “effort” that, like many ideas in human psychology, may not have a specific dictionary word assigned to it. Having drawn such a stark distinction between spending energy and spending effort makes it easier to recall that quality, even if it doesn’t have a convenient term that rolls off the tongue.
(I’d postulate that if carrying heavy boulders up a hill is your hobby or something you can bring yourself to enjoy doing, there is certainly a way in which you can do even that without spending effort in this revised definition. By contrast, doing something you loathe may always be full of effort, no matter how little energy it requires from you.)
Could the same point be expressed in a more conservative way, like “you should not spend too much effort to achieve something”? Sure. However, for many people it wouldn’t be as easily internalised.
> Let me share my slightly unusual definition of “effort”: it’s the felt experience of expending energy beyond what an activity requires