Effort Depends On Alternatives

What makes something effortful? For example, why is it harder to do a math problem than play a video game?

Understanding how effort works is essential. Many of our goals will require a lot of it. If we have the wrong view on how effort works, many of our systems will fail ...

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...

At first, the ego-depletion theory was the dominant model on how effort works. It argues that willpower was a resource that could be depleted. Like a muscle, it could also be strengthened.

But the theory was criticised. Giving a reward could increase effor...

Effort is the experience that what you're currently doing is not worth it.

It's like computer time-sharing. The computer resources don't get used up, but they are limited. If you want to do something like running a major background process, like a backup or rendering o...

In the opportunity-cost framework of effort, when you get rewarded for an effortful activity, the experience of effort becomes less unpleasant, meaning we can increase our self-control by remembering that certain actions yield positive results.

If persistence in do...