Things They Should Invent: effortlessness awareness

At an environmental presentation last year, I sat next to an investment banker who was initially skeptical when I explained that New Yorkers have a significantly lower environmental impact than other Americans. “But that’s just because they’re all crammed together,” he said. Just so. He then disparaged New Yorkers’ energy efficiency as “unconscious,” as though intention were more important than results. But unconscious efficiencies are the most desirable ones, because they require neither enforcement nor a personal commitment to cutting back. New Yorkers’ energy consumption has always been low, no matter what was happening with the price of fossil fuels; their carbon footprint isn’t small because they go around snapping off lights.

I've seen this sentiment - that optimal behaviour achieved effortlessly doesn't count - in a number of places. It's something a lot of people seem to land on without much critical thinking. You see it often in environmentalism (c.f. the plastic bag thing). Those calculators and websites that measure your environmental footprint tend to give you more credit for making drastic changes to negative behaviour than for having positive behaviour in the first place. Remember the One Tonne Challenge? If you reduce your greenhouse gas emissions from 8 tonnes to 7 tonnes, you win. If you reduce your footprint from 2 tonnes to 1.5 tonnes, you don't win. During Commuter Challenge week, you get credit for carpooling to work if you normally drive alone. However, you don't get any credit if you normally walk to work as a matter of course.

You also see it in health and fitness. Remember the thing where you're supposed to take 10,000 steps a day? You see all kinds of hints about how to get steps in by going slightly out of your way. (Park far away! Take a walk after dinner!) I happen to have inadvertently achieved it by living and working a few minutes' walk away from subway stations. But I have had people tell me on one hand that I'm being lazy by wanting to live an effortless walk away from the grocery store (as opposed to a distance that is either an effortful walk or a short bus ride), and on the other hand that I really should make the effort to maybe walk to the next subway station for health and fitness reasons.

You also get it in financial planning. I stay in the black primarily by diverting a certain amount of money from each paycheque into another account that I have to go to some effort to access. It never passes through my chequing/debit/bill-paying account, so I don't feel like I have it, so I don't spend it. Crude, but effective. Even if I spend every dollar in my primary account, I still have some money. But in some quarters I'm considered financially irresponsible because I buy my lunch instead of packing it, buy my groceries at the most convenient store rather than wherever each item is cheaper, etc.

I'm thinking it might be helpful if the general population became more inclined to appreciate effortlessness. Then when people go about making changes to things, they might be more inclined to look for solutions that will make optimal behaviour effortless rather than trying to get people to make additional efforts, however small.

So how do we raise awareness of effortlessness? What if there were websites/quizzes along the lines of the environmental footprint ones, but with the intention of drawing your attention to what you're already doing? They could determine the behaviour of the average person, and set up the quiz to identify where you're doing better and congratulate you for it. "Congratulations! Just by going about life normally, you're already using 10% less energy than the average person!"

Of course, we can't stop there because everyone would become complacent. So the next step, once we have everyone aware of the good their already doing effortlessly, is to promote ways to introduce effortless optimal behaviour next time people are changing things. Why next time they're changing things? Because that's a time when things are changing anyway, so may as well change for the better. For example, rather than "Replace all your lightbulbs with CFLs," say "Next time a lightbulb burns out, replace it with a CFL." Rather than "Walk or bike to the grocery store," say "Next time you move, try to find a place where walking to the grocery store is just as easy as driving." Rather than "Stop all not-strictly-necessary spending and pay off your debt," try "Next time you get a raise, put the entire amount of the raise towards paying off debt on top of your normal repayment schedule."

I think if people had more respect and appreciation for effortlessness, a great many things would get done better.