If you want to see effort at work, watch a queue form where there is no reason for one. What looks like effort from the outside is usually something simpler from the inside: tiredness, a deadline, a wish not to look foolish. Ask most people why they did what they did and they will give you a reason; ask them again a week later and the reason will have quietly changed. The measure that matters is not what people say about effort but what they do when nobody is scoring.
The cost of being right
The point is not that people are foolish. The point is that effort is expensive, and we economise on it like everything else. Understanding people turns out to be a more urgent task than changing them, and a great deal harder. Put a number on effort and it becomes a target; put a target on it and the number stops meaning what it meant. It is tempting to call this irrational. It is more useful to ask what it is for.
