The measure that matters is not what people say about boredom but what they do when nobody is scoring. The lesson is modest. Build for the person who exists, not the one in the model. The remedy is rarely exhortation. It is a change to the situation so that the easier choice is also the better one. None of this is new. Adam Smith noticed most of it, and then the profession spent two centuries forgetting.
What the evidence shows
The measure that matters is not what people say about boredom but what they do when nobody is scoring. The lesson is modest. Build for the person who exists, not the one in the model. The strange thing about the late fee is not that it exists but that it works, most of the time, for most people. Every one of us runs the same shortcut, and every one of us believes we are the exception.
