David James Olney

8 October, 2026

Last week I wrote Thank You For Making An Effort. It was about what happened when two people made an effort to “see” each other and appreciate the work each was doing to get through the day. That brief encounter made my day. Your responses to the post made my week. Thank you, everyone.

I nearly made that post much longer. After twenty years as a university teacher and researcher, I still have the impulse to understand and explain an inspiring event as soon as it happens. This time I had the good sense to tell the story first, then spend a week revisiting what psychology and neuroscience might add to it. I kept coming back to a question that sounds simple until someone tells you to do it.

What does it mean to make an effort?

My earliest memories supply two very different answers. At a swimming carnival, the deputy principal of my blind primary school told me to make an effort. I understood him to mean: do better, even if you have no idea how, and there will be unpleasant consequences if you do not. A carnival that had merely been intellectually uninteresting became physically and emotionally unpleasant. As you might imagine, I did not think this teacher was cool, even though he drove an MGB.

My Hungarian grandmother used different words: “Just have a go.” I cannot remember what I was meant to have a go at. I remember wanting to try, because Gran would make it okay whatever happened.

Both adults wanted action from me. One made effort feel like a test I was already failing; the other made it feel possible to begin. That distinction matters when we tell someone to push themselves. An instruction can be attached to threat, curiosity, affection, purpose or some unruly mixture of them. The same stomach full of butterflies may accompany dread on one occasion and anticipation on another.

I think it was my Year 10 Social Studies teacher, Mr Ormond, who suggested that I could choose how to interpret those butterflies. He also worked out that I should do work experience at a law firm. Mr Ormond, you will probably never know how much I appreciate and owe you.

Later, when I taught university students, I learned that “do more work and get a better mark” seldom brought out their best. I had more success when I could connect the work to the person they hoped to become. That is my experience, rather than a formula that works on every student. It does fit a substantial body of motivation research: students are more likely to act from their own interest and values when teaching supports their sense of competence, autonomy and connection to others. [1]

So meaningful effort is more than forcing a reluctant mind to issue orders to a reluctant body. We need to know what the effort is for, what it feels like, whether we have a reasonable chance of learning, and whether somebody will help if the first attempt goes badly. My grandmother gave me more of that than the deputy principal did.

The body has a say

Steve Biddulph’s Fully Human and Wild Creature Mind helped me think about another part of this picture. He asks us to take the body’s signals seriously instead of allowing our inner commentary to drown them out. In Fully Human, his “four-storey mansion” is a map for attending to body, emotion, thought and a sense of connection to something larger. In Wild Creature Mind, he develops the image of a responsive, instinctive side of ourselves that can alert us to feelings we have not yet put into words. [2]

The practical invitation is to pause and ask what a sensation might be telling us. A tight stomach could be fear, excitement, hunger, or something else. We can listen to it and inquire before deciding what to do. We should not assume that every gut feeling is correct or that it has a single neurological address. Bodily signals are real information; interpreting them still takes judgment. Research on interoception, our perception of internal bodily states, supports a role for such signals in emotion and decision making without turning intuition into an infallible guide. [3]

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Biddulph and trying his approach, but I could not make it stick throughout an ordinary day. Yoga and guitar have given me plenty of practice in feeling a movement and turning a feeling into action. When I play The Sound of Silence on my Alvarez 12-fret dreadnought, I can feel as if my brain, hands, breathing and attention are working together. The sensation is much harder to carry into an email, a deadline or an awkward conversation.

That difficulty becomes sharper when a task feels threatening. The gap between how I feel while playing guitar and how I feel confronting a difficult email may have less to do with a missing part of my brain than with the state of the whole system at that moment.

When an effort feels like a threat

When we perceive danger, the amygdala and related limbic circuits help assign urgency to what is happening. Through the hypothalamus and brainstem, they influence breathing, heart rate and other bodily changes that prepare us to respond. The prefrontal areas we use to hold goals in mind, consider alternatives and regulate reactions remain part of this network. These regions communicate; there is no separate “survival brain” that simply switches off a rational one. [4]

That protective shift is useful if a car is bearing down on us. It can be costly when the threat is a deputy principal’s criticism or a difficult conversation that calls for curiosity and judgment. A meta-analysis of acute stress found reductions in working memory and cognitive flexibility, with more mixed effects on inhibition. In ordinary terms, we may find it harder to keep our larger purpose in view and imagine another way forward, even as we focus intensely on what feels urgent. [5]

The body is doing useful work when it sounds an alarm. The alarm alone cannot tell us whether we are unsafe, ashamed, underprepared or facing something that matters. Hunger, exhaustion and fear can also crowd out a larger goal. Gran’s reassurance made room for me to try; the deputy principal’s demand narrowed that room. Thoughtful effort can begin with recognising what our body is asking for, checking what the situation actually requires, and finding enough support to choose a response.

Jill Bolte Taylor gives us another way to notice what might be happening in that moment. Her account deserves both an open mind and a clear distinction between a useful personal model and a settled map of the brain.

Four voices in one conversation

Bolte Taylor was a neuroanatomist when she suffered a severe haemorrhagic stroke in the left hemisphere in 1996. She describes losing the ability to walk, talk, read, write and recall her life over a few hours, while remaining aware of striking changes in her experience. Her recovery took eight years. That experience gave her an unusual vantage point, and she later developed the approach in Whole Brain Living. [6]

Her “four characters” pair thinking and emotional modes with each hemisphere. Character 1, left thinking, plans, organises and gets things done. Character 2, left emotion, watches for danger and can become caught in painful memories or fearful predictions. Character 3, right emotion, is playful, creative and present. Character 4, right thinking, takes in connection, perspective and a larger whole. These are Bolte Taylor’s descriptions of recognisable tendencies, not four neatly isolated occupants that brain imaging has established in every person. [7]

That distinction makes the model more useful to me. I recognise the planner who could prepare a lecture brilliantly and still worry about the next ten things. I recognise the part that hears “make an effort” as a threat and the part that hears “have a go” as an invitation. I also know the pleasure of losing myself in a guitar piece. Naming these modes gives me a way to ask which one is helping, which one needs reassurance, and which perspective has been missing.

Taylor also offers what she calls the 90-second rule. In her account, the initial chemical surge associated with an emotion can pass through the body in about a minute and a half if we do not keep feeding the triggering thought. She suggests breathing, noticing the feeling and allowing that first wave time to settle before anger, fear or shame chooses our next action for us. [8]

Ninety seconds is a useful pause, though it is not an established expiry time for every emotion. Feelings can last much longer, particularly when what happened matters deeply or the situation continues. Research on slow breathing finds short-term effects on the body and more modest evidence that it eases negative emotion. The practical lesson is to create room for a thoughtful response, not to blame ourselves if a feeling remains after a minute and a half. [9]

Bolte Taylor’s BRAIN Huddle builds on that pause. B is Breathe: take a moment and return to the present. R is Recognise: notice the mode of thought or feeling that has taken the foreground. A is Appreciate: treat its contribution with respect, while remembering that it is not our only option. I is Inquire: ask what other perspectives could help now. N is Navigate: choose the next action and keep adjusting as the situation unfolds. The point is to steer through real life with more of ourselves available. [10]

Imagine hearing “make an effort” and feeling your stomach tighten. The huddle does not require you to call that feeling foolish. You can breathe, recognise that an old warning has surfaced, appreciate its wish to protect you, inquire whether this moment is like the old one, and then decide whether to ask for help, take a first step or decline an unreasonable demand. Sometimes making an effort means trying. Sometimes it means changing the conditions under which you are being asked to try.

Those choices bring us back to last week’s street corner. The gentleman and I did not need a neurological theory to speak to one another. We each interrupted our immediate task long enough to notice another person. There was attention, curiosity, a little vulnerability and an action: saying something aloud. That small effort involved more of us than a command to “try harder” could have reached.

We cannot keep the feeling of complete connection we sometimes find in yoga, music or other absorbing work running through every minute of the day. We do not need to. A more realistic goal is to notice when our attention has narrowed, ask what our bodies and feelings might add, remember what we care about, and choose one worthwhile next step. Then we make the effort again when the next moment asks for it.