Victory at all costs: the role of effort in expert action

Abstract

It is generally thought that the better you are at performing a skill, the easier it is for you to perform it. Indeed, effortlessness is often seen as a defining characteristic of expertise. We question the idea that skill improvement invariably coincides with a reduction in the effort it takes to perform it. In place of the idea of effortless expertise, we argue for the view that one key characteristic of athletes, performing artists, and other highly skilled individuals who defy the power law of practice, which states that improvement in skill, while increasing rapidly at first, eventually plateaus, is the ability to maintain a high level of effort in both practice and performance. To support our view, we present a model of attention and conscious motor control in action that helps explain both why automaticity can lead to an improvement plateau and how exerting effort can sometimes enable one to defy the power law of practice.