effortssuch

Effortssuch is a term used in discussions of motivation to describe a tendency to choose, engage in, or persist in tasks that require a notable amount of effort, rather than those that are easy or low-effort. It is discussed in online productivity communities and self-help writing as a lens to understand why some people prefer challenging work.

Origin and etymology: The term appears as a neologism in the early 2020s, without a formal place in psychology. It combines effort and such to signal a search or preference for effortful tasks. There is no widely accepted scholarly etymology beyond its coinage in digital discourse.

Concept: Effortssuch characterizes a preference for intermediate-to-high levels of challenge. It is linked to broader ideas like desirable difficulty, intrinsic motivation, and flow, in that people may experience greater satisfaction, longer persistence, and deeper learning when tasks are neither trivial nor overwhelmingly hard. The phenomenon may be influenced by feedback, task framing, and perceived autonomy.

Applications: In education and workplace training, acknowledging effortssuch can inform task design, such as scaffolding to maintain optimal challenge, providing meaningful feedback, and allowing learners to choose between similarly valuable but differently demanding tasks.

Criticism: Critics note that the term lacks formal validation and may conflate motivation with preference for challenge. It risks overgeneralization across domains and individual differences in tolerance for effort.

See also: Intrinsic motivation, Flow, Desirable difficulty, Self-determination theory, Task difficulty.