Students often feel as though they are learning new material more effectively when the learning process feels more fluent and comes easily to them. However, by definition, desirable difficulties produce a more challenging and effortful learning process. This leads to learners feeling like they are worse off when judging their learning process while using desirable difficulties, and often don't recognize how they will be benefiting from it long term. These metacognitive evaluations based on misleading learning fluency cues or the quality of learning subsequently influence students' decisions about engaging in more difficult study conditions.