I wrote a piece with Nick Hobson in Harvard Business Review (@hbr.org) on how leaders can use empathy wisely to help their employees feel supported while benefitting their own well-being. Check it out and share let me know what you think. hbr.org/2026/01/five...
#empathy #leadership
Effort feels bad. We dodge it, minimize it, complain about it. But we also crave it. In our new paper, we revisit the effort paradox and show why the aversion and the attraction make sense. With @aidanvcampbell.bsky.social & @blairsaunders.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Big shoutout to my co-authors: @gregdepow.bsky.social @minzlicht.bsky.social and Srishti Agarwal from AmuseLabs for all of the amazing work on this project!
In our final preregistered study, we tested how people experience effort in real life using experience sampling over a week.
– More effort corresponded with more meaning, both in leisure and non-leisure
– But only non-leisure effort predicted less enjoyment
– Effortful leisure was still enjoyable!
In a third preregistered study, we compared:
🧩Effortful puzzling vs. a less effortful 🎮"Click-to-reveal the image" game
Again, Sudoku was seen as more meaningful.
Surprisingly: participants often enjoyed it just as much (or more).
In an initial exploratory experiment, we partnered with AmuseLabs to compare:
🧩 Effortful puzzling (Sudoku) vs. 📺 Passive leisure (YouTube videos)
✅ Sudoku felt more meaningful
❌ It wasn’t rated as less enjoyable
We then replicated this in a preregistered study.
In one study, people predicted a tradeoff🤔
Effortful leisure = more meaningful, but less fun.
Were they right?
Not exactly…
If work, a major source of meaning, is declining due to the "Automation Bomb," people may need new sources of meaning.
Our findings suggest that effortful play (not just passive rest) could help fill that gap in our leisure time.
🎉 Our paper is now out in Communications Psychology!
We explore how effortful leisure (like puzzling) can be a source of meaning in daily life.
Across 5 studies (N = 2,569), we find:
- Effort makes leisure feel more meaningful
- But not necessarily less enjoyable
🧵 doi.org/10.1038/s442...
Japan gets something we don't: the subway cleaner and burger cook aren't weird for caring so much about his work—they're practicing a philosophy of presence. Meanwhile we optimize everything into meaninglessness. New post!
open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...
🚨New paper alert! 🚨
I've been fascinated by this contradiction for years: we hate exerting effort, yet we value things more when they're difficult to achieve. Is the effort paradox real, illusory, or adaptive? Have a read!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
I confess: I spent decades selling a self-control narrative that was wrong. My latest post explains why willpower doesn't work the way we thought, and how we accidentally created a moral meritocracy around personality traits we don't choose.
open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...
The Paradox of Hard Work: Why do people enjoy doing difficult things?
www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...
Shows two overlapping distributions of compassion, empathy efficacy, emotion sharing, personal distress, and perspective taking. On the left, those low in Single Item Trait Empathy, who don't consider themselves an empathic person, are lower in all but distress. On the right, those high in SITE who think of themselves as empathic have right-shifted distributions of empathy, but not distress. Underscores that lay conceptions of empathy tend not to include personal distress as a key component.
Received news that my paper with @minzlicht.bsky.social was accepted at Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin🥳. In it, we examine how trait measures of empathy predict everyday state empathy, and what this teaches us about how we measure and experience empathy: osf.io/preprints/ps... #empathy
One must imagine him happy (at least relative to a scenario where, instead of a giant boulder, it was pushing a small pebble for eternity)
Effort isn't just a cost-it's a source of meaning. For all the details, check out our paper here: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Big thanks to my co-authors @minzlicht.bsky.social and Yiyi Wang!
So, why does effort feel meaningful? Part of if might be feeling competent and mastering challenges-but the story isn't so simple. And yes, there's a limit: too much effort can backfire and feel overwhelming (sorry Sisyphus). Balance might be the key.
We even tested this with AI🤖! Writing with ChatGPT made things easier, but those who wrote manually felt more meaning in their work. Automation might save us time, but it comes at a cost to how much we value what we do.
But this wasn't just in their heads! When participants had to invest mental effort into real tasks, from math problems to writing assignments, harder tasks felt more meaningful-even when they weren't more enjoyable. Effort ≠ fun, but it still feels worthwhile.
In two studies, we had people imagine they and others were exerting more (or less) effort on a task for the same rewards. The more effort they imagined, the less fun but more meaningful the task felt.
Does effort make life more meaningful? Was Sisyphus living the dream? In our new paper (now accepted in Cognition!), across 6 studies with nearly 3,000 participants, we found that more effortful tasks feel more meaningful 🧵
