Scientific Definition
The brain minimizes effort by default — most cognition is on cruise control.
Plain-English Definition
The brain minimizes effort by default — most cognition is on cruise control.
Feynman Explanation
Thinking is expensive. We avoid it whenever we can.
Core Principle
The brain minimizes effort by default — most cognition is on cruise control.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
The brain minimizes effort by default — most cognition is on cruise control.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Most user behavior is energy-minimization in disguise.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Thinking is expensive. We avoid it whenever we can.
Examples
- Defaults dominate behavior because thinking is metabolically costly.
- Most user behavior is energy-minimization in disguise.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Design for the lazy user. They're everyone, most of the time.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Design for the lazy user. They're everyone, most of the time.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
The minimum energy needed to start a reaction; same idea for starting habits or initiatives.
Time is fixed; energy is not. Manage the renewable.
People, tasks, and inputs that quietly drain disproportionate energy relative to value returned.
The mind can be socially influenced toward conclusions that bypass scrutiny.
The deepest level of listening — where new possibility emerges that neither party brought into the room.
Rick Hanson: 'Velcro for negative, Teflon for positive.' The brain encodes threats faster and stickier than rewards.
New neurons are formed in the adult brain, especially the hippocampus.
Mental rehearsal pattern: see yourself doing the new behavior, refine, step in, run it kinesthetically until it's natural.
Deriving general rules from specific examples; the leap from instance to concept.
The brain evolved to reason adaptively, not always truthfully, to reduce the cost of errors.
We solve problems by adding, even when subtracting would be better.
Assuming that if one option is true, another must be false, when both can be true.