When you try too hard to perform mental work, you intensify the residual stress which is already present,and you create an even higher level of residual stress. This makes learning even more difficult. Your should begin new mental work with simple reflection, creating a small mental base of knowledge with a few notches to add other information. As you slowly build on this knowledge, the base area will increase and the number of notches will multiply, thus naturally increasing your pace and intensity. These areas of knowledge can then be inserted into other areas of knowledge to speed up the pace and intensity of performing mental work naturally.
Situational stress is created from events occuring less often in our lives.
I believe situational stress goes up by some factor of our residual stress. If you have a residual stress of an arbitrary number of two, then your situational stress will go up by some factor of two. The limit of this space in the box could represent a point of zero reflection time or point of irrational behavior, with little thought for consequences of actions. By learning to maintain a lower residual stress and offering hope to children and adults, we will lower residual stress and help keep situational stress from reaching this critical point. This could be valuable in preventing senseless violence in schools and in the community.