In practice, returning to a hard task in this way comes with a ‘restart’ cost: we must spend time and mental effort getting back into our task set, rather than making progress. For this reason, it is important to create time and space for hard tasks.
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Similar ideas to Hard task needs restart costs
The brain needs ready access to the information, plans, and procedures it will be using to solve complex problems. This collective task knowledge is known as a task set. But the task set is not always immediately available.
Returning to a hard task...
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...
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