The Sweet Spot by Paul Bloom

Author:Paul Bloom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2021-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

LET’S DIVE DEEPER into the sorts of effort that people enjoy. To take a perfectly mundane example, I like doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. It is intrinsically pleasurable. Nobody pays me to do it, and I’m not good enough to ever impress someone with my skills. Yet it’s fun.

There’s some pleasure in finishing the puzzle, but this isn’t the main draw. I can easily complete the Monday puzzles, but I don’t bother with them; they’re too easy. It’s the later days of the week, when they get harder and when I often fail, that I enjoy. Successful endings aren’t as satisfying or essential as many think. Remember: Rocky lost.

The struggle is at the core of the pleasure here. Think about crumpling paper and tossing it, from a distance, into a wastebasket, trying to get three in a row. Or eating M&Ms as a couple, one throwing the candy through the air, the other trying to catch it in his or her mouth. Such activities have no inherent value; we invent them to make mundane activities such as disposing of garbage and eating sweets interestingly difficult.

What makes some activities exceptions to the law of least work? We talked before about explaining the ebb and flow of effort in terms of opportunity cost; we feel tired and bored when there is something better to do; that’s why effort is typically aversive. And so we can frame the question like this: What is it about certain types of effort that make them better than possible alternatives? What distinguishes furniture moving from crossword puzzles?

One answer is that effort becomes enjoyable when it’s seen as play, or as a game. (“I don’t think of it as work,” the productive person says in an interview about the secrets of her success.) There is a whole movement of “gamification,” where something that is plainly not a game is presented as one.

This doesn’t answer the question; it just reframes it. Now, instead of asking what sort of effort is pleasurable, we’re asking what sort of effort counts as a game? Still, the reframing is useful, because people have thought deeply about what makes for a good game. The following properties often come up.

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