Humans and other animals find mental (and physical) effort aversive and have the fundamental drive to avoid it. However, doing nothing is also aversive. Here, we ask whether people choose to avoid effort when the alternative is to do nothing at all. Across 12 studies, participants completed variants of the demand selection task, in which they repeatedly selected between a cognitively effortful task (e.g., simple addition, Stroop task, and symbol-counting task) and a task that required no effort (e.g., doing nothing, watching the computer complete the Stroop, and symbol-viewing). We then tabulated people's choices. Across our studies and an internal meta-analysis, we found little evidence that people choose to avoid effort (and hints that people sometimes prefer effort) when the alternative was doing nothing. Our findings suggest that doing nothing can be just as costly-if not more costly-than exerting effort.

Humans and other animals find mental (and physical) effort aversive and have the fundamental drive to avoid it. However, exerting no effort, doing nothing, is also aversive: it leads to boredom. Here, we ask whether people choose to exert effort when the alternative is to do nothing at all. Across nine studies, participants completed variants of the demand selection task, in which they repeatedly selected between a cognitively effortful task (e.g., simple addition, Stroop task) and a task that required no effort (e.g., doing nothing, watching the computer complete the Stroop). We then tabulated people’s choices. Across all studies and a mini meta-analysis, we found no evidence of effort avoidance and sometimes even a preference for effort when the alternative was doing nothing. Our findings reveal the limits of effort avoidance, suggesting that people do not seek to completely minimize effort expenditure.

Research on self-control typically emphasizes the benefits of using a singular adaptive strategy to overcome temptation in the pursuit of longer-term goals. However, we propose that self-control is better conceived as a “toolbox” of strategies that people can then strategically use in everyday life. In eight samples across important life domains, participants (N total = 2,347) reported their use of seven strategies that determined their strategy repertoire – or strategy “toolbox” – for each goal. Results suggest that having a more well-equipped strategy repertoire was associated with greater subjective goal progress (r = 0.32-0.39). Similar results were found for some domain-specific behaviours (healthy food intake, adaptive financial behaviours; r = 0.20-0.41), but not others (snack intake, credit score; r = -0.03-0.04). Together, these findings highlight the importance of having access to a range of strategies, which has further implications for downstream regulatory processes in everyday life (e.g., regulatory flexibility).