This goes in a necessary direction, from my personal take away of Gower's recent post on the subject.

Mathematics is suffering from Goodhart's Law:

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Doing something difficult was a signal that you:

a- understood it and all the background information it requires

b- internalized techniques and methods that are helpful in problem solving in general

Now it just means nothing

Timothy Gower