[Denzel]

‘Desirable difficulty’ is the research term. To solve your problem, first understand your users need a mindset change. We need to connect their action to a “satisfying feeling” as you said.

You want your users to be like weight lifters. No lifter comes out the gym saying, “Man that was the best workout, felt so easy,” to the contrary, lifters use progressive overload to induce difficulty because that difficulty connects to the results they want.

For your users, you need some way to measure the outcome, so that you can show them, “hey look, that mild discomfort lead to more progress on what you care about,” and then you need to consistently message that some difficulty is good.

Mindset change takes consistency and time. Won’t happen over night. You’ll know you succeeded when students become aware of “hey, I’m not learning as well if it doesn’t feel difficult”, and then react by increasing the challenge.

[watwut]

Weightlifters use weight they can lift and feel good after the session. Literally. They may feel tired, but they feel good. They see weights go up and feel like progressing (unless they are in fact stagnating).

That is literal opposite of what OP describes. What OP describes is weight lifter taking on weight they cant lift and conatantly feeling like a failure after each training.

[ChadNauseam]

That's a great analogy. I'll need to think about how to message that difficulty is good. It's a tricky proposition.