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New research suggests that knowing when to apply effort and when to relax can be adaptive.

Effort feels worthwhile when the expected reward or information gain outweighs the costs.

The brain continuously calculates eight types of effort costs, both objective and subjective.

The idea that you need to keep busy permeates much of today’s culture. Tasking, and especially multitasking, seems to be the sign of being smart. By contrast, sitting idly by while others are engaged in seemingly useful work can make you look like there’s something wrong with you. But is it possible that something is wrong with those other people?

A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Effort

In a 2026 paper led by psychologist Nathalie André and colleagues at the University of Poitiers, the question of how to decide whether to exert effort gets a fresh look from the field of computational neuroscience. In general, people (and animals) behave according to the “principle of least effort,” meaning that all else being equal, they tend to seek the easiest way to gain a reward or avoid punishment.

However, all effort is not the same. There are times, they note, when effort becomes an acceptable cost. If the effort produces “proportionate outcomes,” then it could be worth investing in. The brain helps us make this decision. It “weighs the costs and benefits of exerting effort in order to allocate resources efficiently and maintain allostasis,” or the optimal use of the body’s systems. People will seek challenging tasks, such as competing in extreme sports, through this allostatic principle because they regard the effort as worth the cost.

Here’s how the........

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