Building bridges between two of the most influential research fields in educational psychology, self-regulation and cognitive load theory, is highly relevant but also challenging. The collection of papers in this special issue reflects this interplay by reviewing the still scarce base of empirical data in an impressively elaborated and profound way. The papers offer different perspectives on how to improve learning by stimulating both activities for self-regulation as well as for reflecting the mental effort which can be used in return for monitoring and regulation. They provide arguments for the two sidedness of the relationship of self-regulation and cognitive load: that cognitive load can cause self-regulation and that self-regulation can cause cognitive load. The common understanding of self-regulation in this issue is very much focused on monitoring and could benefit from a broader view by including the whole cycle of self-regulation and moderating motivational factors like self-efficacy, as proposed in many self-regulation models. The conceptualization of effort, as it is referred to in most of the papers, could also profit from a more differentiated view, which takes into account the origin of required or invested mental effort. Overall, what learners actually decide to do when dealing with self-regulation as well as with cognitive load highly depends on their resources. In an integrative model, the role of potential resources is discussed as a starting point for future research. This discussion invites for an even broader, more individualized, and differentiated view to add to the bridge-building attempts of this impressive collection of research.