DANIEL KAHNEMAN

• Recency — “When was the last time I used this?”
• Frequency — “How often do I use this?”
• Acquisition Cost — “How difficult/expensive is it to get this?”
• Storage Cost — “How much space and maintenance cost is it tied to?”
• Retrieve C...

A new way of thinking about effort is in terms of opportunity cost. In the paper "An Opportunity Cost Model of Subjective Effort and Task Performance", Robert Kurzban and co-authors argue that certain parts of your brain can deploy many possible functions.

However, the ex...

Mental effort is costly, so we generally prefer to work on an simple task rather than a hard task. We procrastinate more if we expect a certain task to be hard.

This happens because the more effort a task requires, the more someone stands to gain by putting the same amount of effort in...