Every strenuous exercise involves some mixture of suffering and pleasure. The key to sticking with it is getting the balance right
“People avoid effort, but it’s also something that we can learn to like,” said Michael Inzlicht, a colleague of Dr. Bloom’s at the University of Toronto. In addition to pleasure, humans seek out things like competence, mastery and self-understanding. “You can’t get those without pushing yourself,” he said.
Why do people enjoy doing difficult things?
“You can imagine that some people are willing to work hard, but go about it from a sense of duty and responsibility,” Inzlicht told me for my New York Times story. “But other people—call them ‘joyful workers’—this is what they live for. This is what gives them purpose. This is what makes them feel important. This is what helps them make the world make sense.” The existence of “joyful workers” suggests that, even if the Effort Paradox applies to everyone, it doesn’t apply equally. Where you sit on the Meaningfulness-of-Effort scale probably reflects a changeable mix of nature and nurture.
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