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Effort is dead, long live effort

Article in Organizational Dynamics · July 2019

DOI: 10.1016/j.orgdyn.2019.07.001

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Effort is Dead, Long Live Effort:

Performance as ‘Planning for a Good Trip’
Fabrice L. Cavarretta
ESSEC Business School
Keywords: effort; motivation; performance; addiction; self-efficacy; behavior

I. Introduction 2
II. Misreading effort as a cause........................................................................................ 3
A. The Difficulties in Defining Effort ................................................................................ 3
B. Effort-Cause vs. Effort-Consequence ............................................................................ 4
C. Effort reflects complex processes .................................................................................. 4
1. Sensibility to initial conditions. ........................................................................................ 4
2. A self-fulfilling prophecy. ................................................................................................ 5
D. Effort vs. Pleasure .......................................................................................................... 5
III. Centering our behavioral loops on pleasure .............................................................. 6
A. An Addiction Analogy ................................................................................................... 6
B. Humans Long-Term Behavior as Complex Looped Systems........................................ 6
C. Designing Loops: …Effort-Performance-Pleasure-Motivation-Effort… ...................... 7
IV. Long-term performance as sustained spirals ............................................................ 8
A. Effort and Agency .......................................................................................................... 8
B. Beware of the Effort-as-Pain Cultural Script ................................................................. 9
C. Robust Performance: The Leveraged Effect of Indirect Activities ............................... 9
V. How to Build success spirals ..................................................................................... 10
A. Initiation and (Self-)Selection ...................................................................................... 10
B. Leveraging Psychological Drivers ............................................................................... 11
1. Identity ........................................................................................................................... 11
2. Locus of control ............................................................................................................. 11
C. Environment and Nudging ........................................................................................... 12
D. Social Validations and Evolutionary Selection............................................................ 12
E. Efforts Going Undercover: Habits, Gamify and Small Steps ...................................... 13
1. Habits. ............................................................................................................................ 13
2. Gaming. .......................................................................................................................... 13
3. Small-Steps..................................................................................................................... 13
F. Forcing of Direct Effort? Only if Strictly Necessary and Mastered ............................ 14
VI. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 15
VII. Selected Bibliography ................................................................................................ 15
VIII. Vitae .......................................................................................................................... 16
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I. INTRODUCTION
Instinctively, effort seems to play a fundamental role in performance and success. Consider
Steve Jobs spending nights designing products with his engineers. Reaching the height of modern
engineering must have involved considerable effort. Consider an eight-year-old Johnnie that is
admonished to spend time learning a mathematics lesson. Johnnie’s parents lament as they expect
hypothetical efforts to lead to learning, subsequently to good grades, and hence to success.
Effort is expected to play a key role in both situations, yet we can sense that the phenomenon
occurring with Jobs differed fundamentally from what Johnnie’s parents were trying to obtain.
Making effort seems straightforward enough, but could it be that the word hides very different
phenomena?
Popular culture and intuition expect individuals to exhibit effort. Such intuitive belief comes
naturally in various endeavors—both personal and professional ones—for instance, regarding an
individual’s efforts to lose weight, to get good grades in school, or to grow professionally. The
ability to exert effort seems central to our society.
Yet, consider how the science of organizational behavior deals with the concept of effort. It
relies on the dominant Human Relations (HR) perspective, which has stated—for nearly a
century—that motivation drives performance. By contrast, effort does not occupy a central position
in this scientific literature, beyond the fact that it could be derived from various motivational
processes.
How can we reconcile strong societal beliefs about efforts’ powers with its apparently marginal
role in scientifically explaining human behavior?
A first realization lies in observing the gap between effort being a consequence vs. being a
cause. Consider the examples of Steve Jobs spending nights on products vs. Johnnie being
admonished to study mathematics. In Jobs’s case, effort is derived from a social and psychological
context where Steve wants and likes to spend the night working with his team. In Johnnie’s case,
effort is expected even if such desire is absent; indeed, for underperforming students, all parties
seem to agree that the injunction for effort is grounded in the lack of desire for the activity.
In both cases, we use the word effort, yet those have fundamentally different meanings. In
Steve Jobs’s case, it appears as the consequence of undisclosed factors whereas in Johnnie’s case,
effort is expected as the cause of desirable outcomes. As advocated by the HR school, Steve Jobs
illustrates motivation as the key lever to obtain effort. By contrast, Johnnie’s case illustrates the
still widespread beliefs that things would be much simpler if individuals could naturally exhibit
effort and that effort seems required as a cause for outcomes to occur.
The confusion between effort-cause and effort-consequence explains the troubles occurring
every day in the workplace when managers fail to properly conceptualize employees’ lack of
effort. Such misunderstanding lies in viewing performance as a simple process resulting from clear
inputs such as rewards, punishments, or a natural capability of the individual to exhibit effort.
Focusing directly on expanding effort—as if it were the central cause of all things—will often
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fail as it will miss all the possibilities for effort to be attained indirectly. Steve Jobs was exhibiting
effort, but probably for other reasons than the sake of effort. Misreading the mechanics of his
success path reduces the chances of one emulating it. Focusing on trying to expand effort can often
backfire, as the typical Johnnie is likely to get disgusted by mathematics if repeatedly forced to
swallow it.
This paper seeks to prevent such confusions by acknowledging the dynamics leading to
performance and success as complex and looped processes more akin to those of addiction. In this
alternate perspective, effort is not anymore the main lever to play on, or a gift one hopes to be
naturally endowed with.
Rather, implementing a successful path amounts to triggering a spiral linking effort to
performance to pleasure to motivation to … effort. This pattern matches the one occurring when
people get caught into compulsive behaviors such as drug abuse, sports obsession, or music
passion. Interestingly, this can explain both toxic (e.g., addiction) and desirable outcomes (e.g.,
work performance).
Such conceptualization allows properly accounting for the dual nature of effort as both cause
and consequence. It relies on a wealth of well-documented tools of organizational behavior such
as motivation and self-efficacy. More importantly, it suggests paths towards performance that can
be put in place by individuals themselves, or by those that lead them—e.g., parents, policy makers,
and managers. However, those strategies are less direct than when hoping for simple effort to
miraculously solve all issues.
Through examples, this article navigates three typical contexts: management (the focus of this
journal), education (a very important context of long-term leadership), dieting (a popular concern
that triggers numerous shared representations to elaborate on). It takes both the point of view of
individuals willing to manage their own performance (e.g., I want to lose weight; I want to learn
accounting; etc.) and of the leaders that wish to develop the performance of followers (e.g., a parent
that wants a child to succeed academically; a manager that wants a subordinate to perform at work).
II. MISREADING EFFORT AS A CAUSE
For sure, performance relates to effortful actions. However, this common association could be
misleading in various ways as the existence of such central capability for effort that would explain
outcomes is not supported by science. We first review the sources of confusion regarding the exact
role of effort as not anymore central nor causal to success. Then, we examine how the apparently
intuitive causal link from effort to outcomes may be in the wrong direction, with actions and
outcomes actually leading to effort.
A. The Difficulties in Defining Effort
Strangely, effort plays a small role in most theories of human behavior. A few literatures
mention it explicitly. For instance, the deliberative practice perspective links extreme performance
to working long, hard and relentlessly. It even suggests that becoming an expert requires a large
amount of activity, a rule made famous by the journalist Malcolm Gladwell as the “10,000 hours
rule.”
However, as suggested by the word deliberate, delivering effort comes from a specific attitude
where the individual has internalized a desire to perform. Furthermore, it entails a focus on
continuous improvement. The origin of those attitudes varies depending on the individual: some
psychological traits—such as compulsiveness—may naturally imply deliberative practice.
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Deliberative practice can also be induced, e.g., by parents into their children or by a coach into
their players.
If we consider classical theories of organizational behavior, they tend to focus rather on
motivation, which implicitly is expected to drive effortful activities. For sure, effort appears
explicitly sometimes in frameworks such as those exploring grit and self-control. However, such
mentions are rare and the belief that humans can, could, or should focus on sustaining efforts to
reach lifegoals is mostly not justified by science.
Unfortunately, this belief dominates and has disturbing consequences. In the health sphere,
people know that they should reduce their food intake. This fact coupled to an overconfidence in
the possibility to sustain an effort feeds the massive dieting industry. Unfortunately, diets on
average don’t work and recurring failures come down to overreliance on sheer effort.
Such nuance is not completely lost on managers aware that the HR perspective cautiously links
effort to comprehensive motivational processes. Yet, in the heat of action, individuals and their
leaders quickly revert to the anxious belief in effort. Under stress—of leader or of the focal
individual—mental representations collapse onto the wish of “if only one were trying harder, if
only one had more will or grit, if one could ‘just make an effort’.”
B. Effort-Cause vs. Effort-Consequence
The core issue here lies with a problem of causality. Popular belief views effort as a cause of
desirable consequences. As we often assume there exists some individual ability to exert effort,
we tend to view effort as a cause by default. Actually, some validated psychological measures of
individual personality that could relate to such ability—e.g., conscientiousness—have been shown
to lead to performance.
However, effort now often surfaces as a consequence of what happens, no longer as a cause.
Most of the literature on motivation takes this effort-as-consequence perspective. For instance, a
teacher may creatively make sciences attractive to a child, which leads to the sought consequence
of the child studying the subject.
Sadly, neither our languages nor cultures clearly distinguish effort as a self-standing cause of
desirable outcomes from effort as a consequence of other factors. To revisit our introductory
examples, notice the use of the same word to describe the long nights of product conceptions by
Steve Jobs and the expected study time Johnnie should put into studying mathematics. Steve did
make an effort. Johnnie should make an effort.
C. Effort reflects complex processes
Beyond the cause vs. consequence confusion, the concept of effort can be confusing because
its effects are complex, i.e., neither progressive nor predictable.
1. Sensibility to initial conditions.
We would love to believe that outcomes depend on well-defined quantities that can explain
outcomes. Unfortunately, the human ability to exert willpower or self-control has been
demonstrated to be limited. In addition, using such ability seems to draw from a limited pool of
mental resources, hence a phenomenon called ego depletion by which usage diminishes the ability,
potentially down to exhaustion. This may explain why most effortful approaches to behavioral
change generate only short-term results. Typically, people can lose weight in a matter of weeks.
Students can study harder for an exam. Employees may perform as expected if they have been
 5

focused on a task. However, the motivations to diet, to study, and to perform tend to disappear
over time.
Furthermore, regarding the cases where expanding effort works, studies have demonstrated
that the (limited) ability of self-control matters more to prevent the desire initially (e.g., when
trying not to start smoking or not to start eating detrimental food) than to effectively enact the
proper behavior over the long term. Effort can play a role, but it must be put at the right spot, not
relied on in the long term.
2. A self-fulfilling prophecy.
If having the ability for effort may help to initiate an action, it also has the troubling property
of being self-fulfilling. Research has identified self-efficacy as the belief in one’s ability to perform
a task effectively. Interestingly, self-efficacy improves motivation in a circular loop: the belief in
the ability to act motivates to perform; performance leads to further self-efficacy perception; which
leads to further acting.
Overall, the link between effort and outcome is not straightforward. Such complexity has been
suggested since the emergence of the HR school in the early 20th century. Early scientific
management (Taylor) viewed the human as a machine driven by rewards or punishments (i.e.,
extrinsic motivations). Soon thereafter, the HR school demonstrated that the social context matters
to get humans in a self-fulfilling prophecy loop where satisfaction lies in accomplishing the work
itself (intrinsic motivations).
D. Effort vs. Pleasure
In most of our cultures, the misunderstandings about effort match about its mirror concept,
pleasure. As for effort, pleasure is remarkably absent from theoretical frameworks about
motivation and performance, appearing mostly implicitly. As when linking behaviors to effort,
people instinctively attribute various behaviors to pleasure-seeking. And as with effort, pleasure
can be viewed both as a cause and as a consequence of actions.
If effort is overly positively expected to be the cause of desirable outcomes, pleasure is overly
associated with detrimental outcomes, e.g., dependencies on toxic substances such as drugs,
cigarettes, and sugar. It has been demonstrated that individuals may engage in addictive behavior
because of differences in how their brains value pleasure. This occurs because humans tend to
value short-term outcomes over long-term ones, following a discounting rule where the perceived
value falls drastically the further away in the future the outcome would occur. The perceived value
falls so dramatically with time that it is labeled hyperbolic, as it follows a law of 1/t (with t being
the time in the future of the focal outcome). However, not everybody discounts with the same
intensity, and studies have demonstrated that addictive behavior, in particular towards drugs,
relates to discounting future events much more drastically than the rest of the population.
Interestingly, discounting the future easily explains why most humans struggle to sustain
efforts for long-term objectives: when tackling a new challenge, people may initially feel
motivated by its novelty. However, beyond the initial excitement of initiating the process, soon
enough the brain starts automatically discounting the too-far-away outcomes. When compared to
the cost of sustaining action, a loss of motivation occurs, which leads to abandonment.
Therefore, effort seems to relate to pleasure, to the point of wondering whether and how efforts
might be sustained over time without continued pleasure.
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III. CENTERING OUR BEHAVIORAL LOOPS ON PLEASURE

Let us return to the example of Steve Jobs creating new products vs. Johnnie having difficulty
to engage in significant studying. Notice that not only Steve Jobs seemed to enjoy creating new
products, but he persisted over decades of hard work even after becoming rich or getting close to
his death. This intuition suggests reinterpreting the two key ideas above—that effort has a dual
nature as both a cause and a consequence; and that effort cannot be sustained over a long period.
Rather than praying for an ability to exert effort, organizing for long-term performance amounts
to organizing a beneficial addictive loop.
A. An Addiction Analogy
In an addiction—for instance drug consumption—one is motivated to repeat an enjoyable
behavior in the short term. The long-term behavior derives from the repetition of a loop: ...
action>pleasure>motivation>action…
In the case of a detrimental addiction, such loop leads the actor to ignore the negative long-
term impacts, for instance health degradation, poverty, or social exclusion. Trying to alter the
behavior of the actor by calling on higher-level motives such as health integrity or social inclusion
fails frustratingly often. Sadly, for most drug addicts, being in the pleasure loop overwhelms the
ability to resist through sheer effort.
Paradoxically, actions to ‘manipulate the toxic loop’ may fare better than ‘just making effort
to resist.’ Examples of such actions include getting far away from the drug (e.g., in a rehabilitation
clinic); or to allow alternate pleasure sources (e.g., take methadone to allow resuming social
activities therefore allowing to find alternative sources of satisfaction); or to engage into enjoyable
activities (e.g., leisure, sport, fulfilling job).
Understanding the addiction pleasure loop suggests reinterpreting drivers of human
performance. Effort may not be efficient to fight a direct desire, whereas actions aimed at finding
enjoyment in target beneficial activities have more chances of success.
Thus, in a pattern similar to a detrimental addiction loop, a successful person could be viewed
as engaged in a beneficial addiction loop. Typically, Steve Jobs was compulsively creating
products, enjoying the process, and starting again. However, given the negative connotation of the
term addiction, we may shun such labeling. An alternative and cautious pun could be to visualize
the complex planning of performance as the ‘planning of a good trip.’
B. Humans Long-Term Behavior as Complex Looped Systems
Loops constitute the basic mechanisms to explain outcomes in many complex systems, in
particular in extreme or sustained phenomena. For instance, in meteorology, a storm forms a loop
where hot air cells tend to rise due to heat, which triggers other cells to follow upward, which then
expands, thus creating more upward movement, which compounds to increase the updraft, and so
forth. The compounded release of tiny amounts of energy happens because a sum of amplifying
movements combines naturally into a large scale and sustained outcome.
Self-efficacy was already mentioned as a motivation through which humans engage in loops.
Once someone engages in an activity (an initial effort), the experience may trigger a sense of
mastery (“self-efficacy”), which motivates them to practice more, leading to further amplification.
Depending on the activity and context, different elements may lead to such looping, including
some biological ones. For instance, it has been demonstrated that diet influences various hormones,
 7

hormones which in turn increase hunger. Similarly, fat storage tends to increase hunger,
constituting another feedback loop that makes people needing to eat increasingly. Hence, sustained
weight gain may derive from a strong loop; weight loss will therefore likely require setting up an
even stronger loop.
Loop occurrences will also involve social interactions. For instance, the hormone testosterone
has been identified as both a cause and a consequence of behaviors. Testosterone tends to increase
aggressiveness. In return, reaching a leadership position tends to increase testosterone. This means
that progression up the leadership ladder may result in hormonal feedback loops1. In this example
of a social performance, the loop has both a biological and a social grounding.
Loops will therefore be sustained by the combination of multiple mechanisms, including
biological, psychological, and social ones. Human behavior may rely on various looped behaviors,
some detrimental, and some beneficial. This suggests that behavior change may occur less through
the pure force of “making an effort” and more by either eliminating a detrimental loop or enacting
a beneficial one. Let us study how to architect such an approach.
C. Designing Loops: …Effort-Performance-Pleasure-Motivation-Effort…
Focusing on enacting beneficial loops addresses two problems. First, as science has
demonstrated that “effortful self-control [is] consistently unrelated to goal attainment”, humans
mistakenly overestimate their ability to sustain effort towards success.
This programed failure is consistently reported in popular culture regarding diets: people
believe in effort to cut their food intake to lose weight; they end up plateauing in their efforts after
a few months and regain their lost weight afterward. Worryingly, such attempts can even push the
body to adapt detrimentally (e.g., by subsequently aiming to store more fat due to the diet). This
tactic is not only inefficient, but it can even lead to further weight gains.
A second problem is to attempt directly to “resist temptation” when actual performance is
mostly attained when people enjoy what they do. This article will not explore the cultural roots of
such a mental model, but readers may recognize a not-so-subtle message of Judeo-Christian
cultures explicitly valuing suffering. We do not challenge here that humans must expend effort.
Rather, we emphasize that effort may occur as an enjoyable consequence rather than as a painful
attempt to sustain willpower.
Let us clarify this nuance: most people may resist the idea of enduring being beaten down and
rolled in mud, in public, during a rainy afternoon. Now, if questioning rugby players that go out in
rainy winter afternoon whether they view their activity as pain and effort, they would paradoxically
put forward … pleasure.
The activity would be viewed as meaningless and unpleasant by the rest of the world. Yet,
once it is regularly practiced, rugby brings the enjoyment of succeeding in difficult tasks (a self-
efficacy effect), and other psychic rewards such as belonging to a successful group. Paradoxically,

1
Such logic does not imply that only testosterone and aggressive behavior lead to leadership, as this constitutes a sad
and biased representation. However, mentioning those documented biological and cultural mechanisms may allow
understanding the origin of biases. Such awareness may also allow progress regarding who reaches leadership
positions (hopefully to allow more women) and for which reason (hopefully less because of a primitive attribution
linking leadership and aggression).
 8

such enjoyable activity relies on regular efforts-as-consequence such as expanding physical

exertion, suffering the pain of contacts, or enduring the rain.
In that story, the amount of an eventual initial effort (if any) does not matter much. For instance,
it is common for a child to have seen rugby on TV or played with her family, and have loved it,
thereby to have been motivated to just join the group. Alternatively, the child might not have
enjoyed rugby a priori, but expanded initial effort nevertheless, for instance, just to belong in a
prestigious school team, or to be physically respected. Whatever the initial conditions—whether it
was effortful or not—what matters is that a loop was established.
Attempting to build motivation and a performance system should thereby be approached with
a similar question: how to frame the activity so that it will create sustained pleasure loops towards
the desired outcome. In more casual words, how to organize performance as ‘a good trip.’
IV. LONG-TERM PERFORMANCE AS SUSTAINED SPIRALS
When observing the trajectory of a long-term performer, notice that loops occur in sustained
and compounded ways. However, this image of a loop—i.e., a circle—may not fully describe the
cumulative and varied aspects of long-term performance. Rather, a spiral better depicts the
phenomena: effort triggers outcomes, and outcomes trigger further efforts in a growingly
successful path. Let us consider how such a system may coalesce, who can initiate it and which
types of activities to focus on.
A. Effort and Agency
The ability of individuals to act in a given environment has repeatedly been invoked.
Interestingly, the position of the actor who exercises it varies depending on the context: either the
focal person herself—ego—reflects and acts on her own motivation; or an external person—
alter—reflects and acts on the motivation of the focal person.
In a management context, we usually consider how leaders shape their followers, the focal
individuals. This amounts to classical motivation concerns: how to structure work so that
employees feel motivated and perform. By contrast, we may also consider the point of view of the
focal organizational actor, for instance a bank employee that tries to motivate herself to learn more
accounting in order to be promoted.
Interestingly, effort predominantly appears in motivation theories with an alter point of view
where agency is exercised by someone manipulating the focal person. This also occurs
overwhelmingly in pedagogy, where considering mainly the point of view of the teacher (alter)
relative to the student (the focal individual), or the parents (alters) towards a child (the focal
individual).
Paradoxically, in various other contexts, effort and motivation are primarily viewed from an
ego perspective, the point of view of the focal individual. Most of the public discourses and
literature about weight-loss take an ego point of view, e.g., “I need to make effort to lose weight.”
Obviously, this issue can also take an alter point of view when parents feel responsible for the
eating pattern of their children or when health authorities attempt to control the health of the
population.
Becoming aware of the similarity of ego vs. alter agency allows learning from one to apply to
the other. For instance, organizing a situation to trigger effort seems natural in alter agency, for
instance when a leader attempts to motivate a follower. This can even be labeled a manipulation,
 9

even though the term manipulation has negative connotations in most cultures.
We know that successful organizational leaders aim for performance of their teams through
comprehensive systems relying on various tools such as instilling values, designing proper
physical settings and establishing communication. Similarly, successful parents manipulate the
environment of their children (e.g., putting books around; going to museums; etc.) so that certain
self-sustained performance (e.g., liking to read, liking art, etc.) is obtained.
These classical and rich situations could be emulated. But can we learn from such agency
towards others (alters), as it edges towards manipulation? Since success derives from a complex
self-reinforcing chain of events, we posit that effortful agency towards oneself (ego) should be
exercised through similar activities.
B. Beware of the Effort-as-Pain Cultural Script
For leaders leading followers or for teachers training students, and for any individuals trying
to enact a behavior, the goal should therefore be to build a system that generates effort as ongoing
consequences. This method is even more effective if it builds up into a chain of compounding
mechanisms that sustain a spiral of success.
Establishing such a system goes beyond forcing oneself to expand the effort to directly tackle
the task at hand, e.g., learn mathematics or restrict bad food. By contrast, the focus should be on
indirect activities, those that trigger various forms of pleasure that subsequently drive the process
and feed further efforts.
A few readers, aware of modern motivation theories, may recognize those ideas.
Unfortunately, many reasons push people to focus on effortful direct tasks, even though those
cannot be sustained and hence ultimately lead to failure. Such short-term focus may occur due to
social reasons, for instance when the cultural scripts overly value effort-as-pain. Trying not to eat
bad food (i.e., diet) satisfies a social belief that performance is associated with pain.
Similarly, in pedagogy, parents or teachers may be tempted to compel a child to learn
mathematics by various incentives, including monetary ones. Unfortunately, providing such
incentives to children tends to make them perceive the task as distasteful. Unknowingly, a
mathematics-for-reward logic leads to a mathematics-is-not-fun outcome. Following the effort-as-
pain cultural script can really have dysfunctional paradoxical outcomes.
Stress constitutes another reason why people unfortunately focus on direct tasks. Stress occurs
in the hope of getting quick results, or in the fear of not already being at the proper performance
level. Under stress, people will defensively collapse onto accomplishing direct effortful tasks, as
if effort-as-pain were to bring better results. Unfortunately, the short-term results tend to lead to
long-term abandonment.
C. Robust Performance: The Leveraged Effect of Indirect Activities
Rather, given our limited ability to sustain willful effort, priorities should be put on activities
that trigger or feed a spiral. Let us provide the typical examples of such indirect activities. In
management—because of the power of self-efficacy—engagement of employees can be obtained
by investing heavily in training. Feedback—verbal, or through the display of metrics, or the
exposure to customers—constitute another major indirect activity. The failure to leverage training
and feedback reduces the likelihood that an employee gets into the loop of performing, finding
pleasure in it, and looping back into further performance.
 10

Similarly, in pedagogy—as practiced by either teachers or parents—play has always increased

the chances that the activity is characterized by intrinsic motivation. For example, rarely would
young people engage naturally into something like ‘combinatorial arithmetic.’ However, formulate
this as ‘Sudoku game,’ and millions of people end up compulsively engaging in the activity
whenever they have spare time. Because of this logic, the modernist pedagogues of the early 20th
century in various European cultures (e.g., Montessori in Italy, Steiner in Germany, Freynet in
France) have similarly advocated for organizing education around activities presented as play.
If considering weight loss, beyond the sheer effort of just ‘avoiding detrimental food,’ an
indirect activity to consider might be to ‘develop liking for beneficial food.’ This can be
accomplished for instance by learning to cook. Knowing how to cook vegetables—for instance
broccoli—can trigger interest in the produce by itself, thus increasing the likelihood of enjoying
eating broccoli. The effort of initiating an indirect activity—here, learning to cook—fares better
than direct attempts to try avoiding chocolate or burgers.
V. HOW TO BUILD SUCCESS SPIRALS
Beyond ‘just making efforts,’ a variety of indirect agentic activities are required to build a
system leading to looped effort-performance-pleasure-motivation-effort spirals. If considering the
context (work, education, fitness, etc.), the task and the position of the individual, the list of
activities grows exponentially. Yet, in all cases, since the goal is to trigger loops with well-
identified dynamics, agentic actions should have an architectural focus.
If popular literature provides directions in its profusion of self-help advice (which readers may
leverage in an ad hoc manner), it relies on shallow scientific groundings and has little architectural
quality.
When considering motivation theories, they provide sound scientific grounding yet from a
predominantly static perspective. For instance, the self-determination theory by Deci and Ryan
links intrinsic motivation to the need for autonomy, competence and relatedness. However,
knowledge of such logic provides little indication of how to compound them into dynamic and
self-sustained loops—effort-performance-pleasure-motivation-effort—that make long-term
success spirals. Let us hereafter review a selection of such mechanisms that can be used to build
and uphold performance spirals. The list is not exhaustive and will be summarized in Table 1.
A. Initiation and (Self-)Selection
A key tenet of motivation theories lies in the distinction between intrinsic vs. extrinsic motives,
the former being more sustainable and less problematic. Accordingly, an activity is more likely to
be continued if it was initiated under the volition of the individual rather than for external reasons.
This suggests that the loop will more likely be preserved when individuals engage in a task
that they chose or already perceive as pleasurable. This creates an initial condition of a sound
linkage: effort-performance-pleasure-motivation-effort. For instance, employees should be
allowed to express a level of autonomy in choice of their assignment, up to choosing their work
group and managers.
Similarly, educators achieve better results by structuring and presenting activities as
intrinsically rewarding to children, even for long and complex tasks. For instance, trying to cram
mathematical concepts such as ratios and proportion into young minds has a significant rate of
failure. By contrast, modernist pedagogical methods (e.g., Montessori) suggest to deeply engage
children into a desirable activity, for instance baking bread and cakes. Once initiated on that
 11

pretense, the explanations and learning of the concept of ratios and proportion becomes much more
successful and can be sustained as such for the whole length of the activity.
B. Leveraging Psychological Drivers
Various concepts in psychology can play a role in promoting continuous effort. Aiming for
sustainability makes a difference if it allows getting the behavior loop bootstrapped, i.e., to reach
the point where performance-pleasure-motivation leads to a next round of effort. Sustenance then
just derives from automatic iteration of the loop.
1. Identity
Since maintaining identity is a key drive in human nature, it constitutes a good lever to create
a success loop. It has been demonstrated that individuals tend to act according to the way they are
perceived by others (a Pygmalion effect), or even to the way they perceive themselves (Galatea
effect). Therefore, manipulating the perception of a focal individual identity will tend to make it
happen. The performance of an employee depends greatly on the fact that the leader believes in
them, a key skill of great leaders. When changing career, it has been demonstrated that individuals
will test their new identity, and that the simple fact of starting to enact a new identity (e.g., “I’m
an entrepreneur”) will help in sustaining the transition process.
Such manipulation may require subtlety as illustrated in protocols surrounding alcoholism.
Convincing oneself that “I’m not an alcoholic” might seem a natural first step to eliminate alcohol
addiction. However, notice that when trying to counter such strong dependence, a more efficient
identity might be of someone that can fight dependence over the long term. This may explain the
logic of the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) protocol, which requires patients to first accept
themselves as “I’m an alcoholic.”2 This allows enacting the identity of someone dealing with the
issue … instead of shunning the depth of the problems. After many years, those that never drank
again could safely declare themselves as non-alcoholics, but it would not matter anymore as the
success loop has been established.
2. Locus of control
Identity relies not only on the already mentioned self-efficacy but on the related and similar
concept of locus of control, i.e., how much the individual perceives to control her environment.
Locus of control is a trait of individuals, so some people consistently perceive that they can
influence things around them, while some others consistently perceive that things are not under
their control. However, it has been demonstrated that people can be trained to increase their locus
of control, i.e., their perception that they can control things.
Overall, any activity that would increase self-efficacy and locus of control would create a
cascading effect by feeding the spiral. Obviously, this suggests training people as much as possible.
Training as a tool is predominantly perceived from an alter point of view, i.e., when a leader or an
educator aims to engage a focal individual. However, the manipulation consisting of training for
improving self-efficacy and locus of control also applies when an individual wants to put oneself
into a success loop. Learning to cook was mentioned as a path towards weight loss. Similarly,

2
The Alcoholics Anonymous organization and protocols are discussed elsewhere, with conflicting results on its
efficacy. Its mention here is not an endorsement, just an example of how identity manipulation can be enacted, its
potential benefit, and the caution it may require.
 12

consciously deciding to read extensively, or to attend conferences, or to talk to experts, etc.

constitute paths towards perception of efficacy and control, thus helpful in clipping the effort loop.
C. Environment and Nudging
Behavioral economists have rendered popular various nudges, the techniques that
unconsciously edge individuals towards desired behavior. Obviously, nudging can play a role in
changing behavior, even though, as for the concept of manipulation, uneasiness can arise on the
wording or about the practices themselves.
Examples of nudging include the trick of surrounding children with books (instead of hoping
or incentivizing the effort of reading) or decluttering one’s environment of detrimental food
(instead of hoping for the sheer effortful ability of resisting those). However, nudging can even
have more subtle effects, as for instance it has been demonstrated that developing gratitude
improves patience, hence ability to value future gain, therefore to perpetuate efforts. Various
leadership and positive psychology recommendations could accordingly be reinterpreted
considering their ability to nudge individuals towards a sustained loop of performance.
D. Social Validations and Evolutionary Selection
As social animals, humans have evolved psychological traits that make them sensitive to social
cues; logically, relatedness to others constitutes a key motivator. Such a type of effect appeared
already above as the Pygmalion effect—when individuals become what others think about them.
In the search for how to stabilize an individual in a success loop, social validation can be combined
with a selection logic. This appears most explicitly in the Japanese language concept of Ikigai,
which covers the idea of ‘reason for being.’ Ikigai has a strong similarity with the concept of flow,
that state of life when individuals perform with a great sense of easiness.
Ikigai—usually presented as a symmetrical Venn diagram—identifies various factors that
converge to provide a sense of harmony in one’s life action. A few of those factors already
appeared above, such as targeting what one is good at (i.e., self-efficacy) and what one loves (i.e.,
the pleasure loop). In addition to those core dimensions, Ikigai is expected to be reached when two
other dimensions are leveraged: ‘what one can be paid for’ and ‘what the world needs.’ This
suggests an interesting social feedback loop in human action, both normative (what the world
wants) as well as instrumental (what the world is willing to pay).
Targeting activities that can bring social validation will thereafter provide both psychological
rewards as well as the means for further actions. In management, the most obvious application
appears in theories of entrepreneurship. Contrary to an idea that entrepreneurship may derive from
large initial endowments in capital, studies demonstrate that most successful firms were able to
bootstrap simply because … they found customers. Once such loop is triggered, the firm has
staying power, and it can progressively alter its business model—pivot—to implement more
complex products or customer relationships.
Such statements may appear as most obvious. However, beginners of entrepreneurship
sometimes miss it in the naïve belief that success derives from a great idea coupled with generous
fund-raising. When studying the history of firms like Microsoft or Ikea, it becomes apparent that
none of those firms were built for the success they have now. More importantly, they had in
common having started as very small endeavors and to have been bootstrapped by a strong market
feedback.
Whether for organizations or individuals, performance continues more through activities that
 13

trigger psychic, social and material validations. This idea appears as such in the deliberative
practice theory which explains the emergence of top performers. Precisely, it demonstrates that
outstanding performers more likely emerge in contexts with clear and frequent feedback (e.g., in
chess or music or mathematics) than in contexts where feedback is rare or ambiguous (e.g.,
management).
The availability of social and, even better, supportive feedback (i.e., under the form of
resources such a money or opportunity) matters greatly to establish and stabilize success loops.
The career of world-class mathematicians or musicians can be viewed as a never-ending spiral of
action-performance steps validated by performance-feedback leading to further motivation and
action. When it comes to the agentic desire to bootstrap and sustain a spiral, actions should be
directed at finding or selecting activities with such social and material feedback.
E. Efforts Going Undercover: Habits, Gamify and Small Steps
To build a spiral, consider hiding efforts into other processes so that the limited self-control of
the human brain is not drained.
1. Habits.
Continuing effort can piggyback the natural ability of the brain to sustain habits. The self-help
literature frequently advocates this as a key factor for success, with solid scientific evidences. For
instance, it has been demonstrated that self-control functions better at establishing habits, in other
words, that habits strongly mediate self-control and outcomes.
2. Gaming.
Pleasure and play have been identified above as a more robust pivot of ongoing performance
than effort. Playful activities constitute natural simulation processes by which many animals
(including primates, dogs, dolphins, birds, etc.) learn how to interact with their environment.
Succeeding to present an activity as a game eliminates the danger of draining self-control as the
impulse for engagement is driven by another psychic mechanism.
Framing activities as games has great benefits, even if this requires more subtlety when dealing
with adults in professional contexts. In organizations – consider the job-design literature – a classic
management method that advocates for the structuring of tasks as measurable and complex enough
to be challenging but not too much. It can be reinterpreted as attempting to elicit a game-like
behavior.
However, notice how quickly such design may wrongly lead to incentives and competitions.
If not properly implemented—as happened with simplistic interpretations of the management-by-
objective (MOB) method—the perception of the task can switch from one of a game into one of a
useless rat race. Individuals end up expending conscious and instrumental effort for the sake of the
outcome (performance measure and bonuses), therefore missing crucial intrinsic motivation.
3. Small-Steps.
Breaking down a large long-term task into small chunks allows it to be evaluated differently.
Consider the overall objective of losing weight, say 20 pounds. The behavioral changes to obtain
such result implies continued long-term effort. If framed this way, the brain is likely to constantly
arbitrage between the large but distant reward of success, and the psychic cost of continuous short-
term actions. The excitement of the early phases and the appearance of first results bring
motivation that justifies the first efforts … at the beginning. However, soon enough, the pain of
 14

the never-ending actions becomes more important than the only remaining motive, a long-term
gain that is very discounted as it lies far in the future. Sustaining such process is mostly doomed.
Making this process into a game consists of breaking it up into sequential, small and diverse
tasks. Each of them can be enjoyable just because each reward can be evaluated in the short term
to balance out its cost. This could include behavioral tricks (e.g., removing bad food from the
cupboard), breaking up the task into incremental gains (e.g., losing one pound per months),
establishing explicit game-like interactions such as playful comparison with a play partner (e.g., a
social competition at losing weight), or seeking self-efficacy validation (i.e., making a succession
of “I can lose one pound” small wins).
Compared to the overwhelming task of losing 20 pounds, a properly sequenced sum of steps
leading to the same results has more chance not to be abandoned. When confronted with several
motivating sub-tasks, individuals naturally perform more efforts-as-consequences, which makes
these efforts more sustainable.
F. Forcing of Direct Effort? Only if Strictly Necessary and Mastered
If making effort makes more sense for the most efficient indirect and leveraged tasks, are there
situations where one could consider forcing efforts on direct tasks?
Theoretically, this possibility should not be ignored. For instance, assuming self-efficacy to be
a motivator, forcing oneself to practice a task may work if it leads to perceived efficacy without
making the task appear distasteful. For instance, imposing rote learning of mathematical
concepts—e.g., addition and multiplication tables—may allow a feeling of efficacy for more
complex and interesting activities later such as actual calculations.
Another example of forcing appears in the public health policy of drastically increasing the
prices of cigarettes through taxes with the hope of reduced smoking among children because of
their limited financial resources. If such policy succeeds in delaying the moment individuals start
smoking, it may succeed in significantly reducing smoking in the long term as adults can better
resist the social pressure to initiate smoking.
In both examples, the forcing of effort on the direct task (e.g., rote learning of mathematics;
restricted smoking) can be justified if it empirically has a powerful indirect effect on the whole
process. However, this approach should be carefully considered. First, if forcing oneself relies on
self-control, remember that humans cannot sustain it in the long-term. More importantly, forcing
may trigger counter effects of various types. Consequently, any policy should consider whether
the intended effect is not actually counterproductive.
Such countering was already mentioned above, when a mathematics-for-reward approach leads
to a mathematics-is-not-fun outcome. Perversely, the countering may appear at a more social level,
i.e., in those managing the focal individuals. For instance, teachers may use grades as rewards and
threats to achieve student learning. Such forcing might be warranted according the logic of
providing self-efficacy. However, actors in pedagogical systems using grades may soon forget that
grading was installed as an indirect activity, in a larger system where students need to be
intrinsically motivated to learn. Soon enough, the grades—and the injunction to make efforts to
obtain them—become the primary focus in order to reach performance. In turn, underperformance
ensues as motivation gets lost and most students frame the whole process as effortful and painful.
Most progressive pedagogical doctrines aim to avoid such organizational drift in the pedagogical
system.
 15

-------- Insert Table 1 approximately here -------

VI. CONCLUSION
The imperative to exercise effort constitutes a widespread socially validated delusion. People
instinctively hope for an ability to make the effort to perform over the long term, even though
willpower and self-control are demonstrated to be limited. Because how sustained performance is
reached does not model properly, the belief in “trying harder” has long-term negative
consequences in the workplace, in families, at school, and even for our health.
More disturbingly, the obsession about effort leads to unfair social stigma (towards those that
seem not to make efforts) or unwarranted validations (towards those that seem to make much
effort). Such social misinterpretations are due to various non-intuitive properties of effort.
For example, recent research has explored the apparent lack of effort among poor people,
frequently interpreted as poverty deriving from a lack of agency among the poor. Disturbingly,
research has demonstrated that self-control is not only in limited quantity, but that it tends to
actually diminish among those that are in poverty. Hence, it may not be that lack of effort drives
poverty, but it may work the other way around: poverty reduces the ability to sustain effort …
hence the increasing poverty of the poor.
By contrast, various philosophical (e.g., Ikigai) or psychology (e.g., Flow) perspectives
identify the complex interaction of factors that support individuals in performing and displaying
effort without risk of exhaustion. This article suggests crystallizing this understanding by an
analogy of another human situation—addiction—where individuals automatically engage in
continued performance.
When it comes to desirable objectives, the best model to construct sustained performance is to
establish a beneficial spiral akin to a beneficial addiction. Organizing for success amounts to
bootstrapping a recurring interaction between effort, action, results, enjoyment, motivation and
effort again. Such a loop relies centrally on pleasure, even in apparently harsh tasks such as those
involving physical suffering (when playing rugby) or seemingly boring (e.g., the endless repetition
to master musical instruments at a high level).
Effort appears to be everywhere. It is a salient concept of many cultures which ends up being
viewed as a primary driver of performance. Unfortunately, because those heading for success
mostly seem to display efforts, we misread effort as a primary cause for reaching desirable
outcomes. Rather, success has weirdly the same dynamics as the spirals constituting undesirable
addictions, a sum of looped actions and pleasures. With that knowledge, a trajectory for success
can be consciously sought and developed for various positive outcomes—such as school success,
work performance or sustained weight loss. And it will amount to “planning for a good trip.”
VII. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The attribution-based theory of motivation identified not only how perceptions predict
sustained effort, but also the bias towards linking outcomes to effort particularly in others. It was
developed by Weiner in “Attribution Theory, Achievement Motivation, and the Educational
Process” (1972, Review of Educational Research 42(2): 203–215).
Many of the concepts evoked here appear in the Malcolm Gladwell book about extreme
performance, Outliers: the story of success (2008, Little & Brown), in particular the reference to
the studies by Ericson on “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert
 16

performance.” (1996, Psychological Review, 100/3).

The limits of willpower and the ensuing ego depletion phenomena have been extensively
studied by Baumeister, for instance, as reported in “Self-Regulation, Ego Depletion, and
Motivation” (with Vohs, K. D., 2007, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 1/1:115–128).
Hofmann, W. demonstrates that willpower matters more to prevent early desire than to sustain
long-term behavior in “Everyday temptations: An experience sampling study of desire, conflict,
and self-control.” (2012, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102/6). Consequently,
Milyavskaya, M. and M. Inzlicht demonstrate the overestimation people make in their ability to
sustain effort in “What’s So Great About Self-Control? Examining the Importance of Effortful Self-
Control and Temptation in Predicting Real-Life Depletion and Goal Attainment” (2017, Social
Psychological and Personality Science 8/6).
How addiction is linked to hyperbolic discounting is discussed by Ainslie, G. and J.
Monterosso in “Hyperbolic Discounting as a Factor in Addiction: A Critical Analysis” (R. E.
Vuchinich and N. Heather, Choice, Behavioural Economics and Addiction). A more
comprehensive treatment of behavior change through the perspective of addiction can be found in
the self-help book by Dr. Young Stick with it: a scientifically proven process for changing your
life—for good (2017, Harper).
The fundamental self-determination framework of motivation by Deci, E. L. can be found in
“The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior.”
(With R. M. Ryan, 2000, Psychological Inquiry 11/4).
Ikigai is a pop culture concept, yet it relates strongly to the more scientifically documented
mechanism of flow, as described by Csikszentmihalyi, M. and I. S. Csikszentmihalyi in Optimal
experience: psychological studies of flow in consciousness (1988, Cambridge University Press).
How habits relate to self-control is exposed by de Ridder, D. T. D., G. Lensvelt-Mulders, et al.
in “Taking Stock of Self-Control: A Meta-Analysis of How Trait Self-Control Relates to a Wide
Range of Behaviors” (2011, Personality and Social Psychology Review, vol. 16/1). Habit-forming
techniques are also illuminated by the literature on digital product addiction for which Nir Eyal
has written the popular “Hooked: how to build habit-forming products” (2014, Portfolio).
Self-help books illustrate many of the logics described here, and sometimes provide interesting
techniques for instance Haden, J. in “The motivation myth: how high achievers really set
themselves up to win3 (2018, Portfolio) or Duhigg, C. in “Smarter faster better: the secrets of
being productive in life and business” (2016 First edition)
VIII. VITAE
Fabrice Cavarretta is a professor of Leadership and Entrepreneurship at ESSEC Business School.
His academic research focuses on the paradigm used by managers when developing new ventures,
on how organizational factors such as leadership influence performance volatility and risk. His
work has been published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, the Journal of Organizational
Behavior, Leadership Quarterly and Industrial Corporate Change.
He teaches mainly the Leadership and Entrepreneurial Manager course in master programs,
coordinates the Ph.D. Entrepreneurship seminar, and developed Intrapreneurship programs for
executives. He published the book “Yes, France is a paradise for Entrepreneurs” (2016, Plon, in
French) where he describes how to tackle specific entrepreneurial ecosystems.
 17

Fabrice Cavarretta has 12 years of operational management experience, including stints as

division General Manager in a large media/telecom firm and founder of a social network startup.
He was trained at Ecole Polytechnique (BA Mathematics), Stanford/ENSTA (MS CS), Harvard
(MBA) and INSEAD (Ph.D.)

Table 1: Indirect activities to build a performance-pleasure-effort spiral
Activity
Select task on pleasure
Leverage identity: Pygmalion
and Galatea
Seek Self-Efficacy
Nudge
Seek Social Validations
Hide effort under gaming
Hide effort under habits
Hide effort by breaking it up
Restrained forcing: make a
direct effort … only if truly
warranted
View publication stats
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Practice Description
Choose an activity that can be practiced through existing intrinsic motivation.
The belief in one’s identity triggers natural motives to accomplish or sustain it.
Can be imposed by alter (Pygmalion effect) or by ego (Galatea effect).
The ability to accomplish a task is a natural motivator. Search all means to reach
and enjoy the self-efficacy perception by relentlessly earning, reading, being
immersed in a task, even forcing the task initially if necessary.
Humans can be nudged into unconsciously accomplishing or avoiding tasks. Both
physical (removing detrimental objects and adding beneficial ones) or cognitive
cues (gratitude) can shift actions in the proper direction.
The social environment may provide never-ending validations that are naturally
motivating or enabling. A few validations are purely psychic (doing a socially
validated task), while others also provide material support (for an entrepreneur,
market validation brings revenues which allow continued development).
Transform the activity into a game, difficult enough to maintain interest, with
proper performance feedback and a competitive tension.
The ability to automatically follow habits and routines allow to sustain successive
tasks without draining willpower.
The expected enjoyment of reaching a large goal in the future is discounted to the
point where effort does not appear worth it. Large long-term goals should be
broken down into many intermediary sub-goals. Accomplishing each smaller task
can be warranted by the short-term expected pleasure. And successive
accomplishment continuously feed further motivation for next sub-task.
Making an effort for a task may be warranted if short-term and if it has rapidly
and leveraged positive effects: e.g., forcing oneself to learn a basic skill may work
if it soon leads to practice, hence a sense of self-efficacy, hence establishes a self-
sustaining loop.