Why we do difficult things. Or not.

The Power of Heuristics

Walk into any grocery store or convenience store and buy yourself something to drink.  Go ahead, take a few seconds and think about the process you go through when deciding what you want.

I’m guessing that it took just that, a few seconds.  In the time that it has taken you to read the first fifty-nine words of this blog post, you were able to choose one drink out of hundreds of options that could be found in any store that you considered. 

“But I always choose that.”

“I want something sweet, but not too sugary.”

“That was my dad’s favorite and I always think of him when I buy it.”

While these thoughts may not have bubbled up to the surface of your consciousness, they impacted your decision.  In fact, if you took the time to sift through every consideration that you could make about purchasing a drink, you would never make it out of the beverage aisle, let alone choose a bag of chips, box of cereal, or test the ripeness of every avocado. 

When making any decision, large or small, the brain often relies on heuristics, cognitive shortcuts that allow us to make decisions in a complex world. Interestingly, the brain processes different types of thinking in different areas of the brain. For example, when presented with questions or problems similar to questions or problems you have already considered, there is increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal gyrus and the left angular gyrus (1).

 If the decision requires more careful thought or intentional deliberation, it moves through other areas in the brain. According to Dr. Avgusta Shestyuk, “fMRI studies often find that when a task gets progressively harder, we see more activity in the brain, and the prefrontal cortex in particular. Here, we are able to see that this is not because the neurons are working really, really hard and firing all the time, but rather, more areas of the cortex are getting recruited. (2)” When you are making a difficult decision, or deciding if something is worth the effort, the thinking lies in the structures of the neocortex. 

Is it worth it?

The Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) is located towards the front of the brain and is more or less wrapped around the top of the Corpus Callosum, the structure which separates the two hemispheres. As a part of the neocortex, it is involved in things like emotional regulation, planning, and decision making. Similarly, the Anterior Midcingulate Cortex (aMCC) is responsible for weighing out the perceived effort of an action with the perceived reward (3).  Basically, it helps us decide how hard we should work for a desired outcome. 

In layman’s terms, it’s where willpower comes from. 

Imagine a scale that weighs out the effort of doing something on one side and the reward of completing that something on the other. If the perceived effort is too high, then the reward is not worth the action required to earn it. If the reward is desirable enough, it will be worth the perceived effort. This decision is usually made pretty quickly. The ACC and the aMCC play a major role in the heuristic thinking involved in justifying the energy required to perform an action in pursuit of a larger goal or objective. They are the job site supervisors who are responsible for budget approval of time and energy. 

In one study, researchers actively damaged the ACC of rats and found that they were less willing to work harder for a preferred food item than rats who had a fully functioning ACC (4). Without the ACC in full working order, the task required (pushing a lever) for the preferred food item (a sucrose pellet) simply wasn’t worth it. Their budget supervisors would not approve the action, and opted for a less desirable option.

Tipping the Scales

Studies have shown correlative evidence that volume and energy use in the aMCC increases as an individual participates in activities that were perceived as difficult or unpleasant. This next statement is going to be a mass oversimplification of thousands of hours of research:

When you do difficult things that you don’t want to do, your willpower grows.

Or, when you do something that is not easy to do, your brain adapts and begins to change the way it weighs out both sides of the effort/reward scale.  As the ACC and aMCC develop, they tip the scale more in favor of the reward and are more likely to approve the expenditure of energy in pursuit of that reward.

Why should you do hard things?  Because the more difficult tasks you complete, the more challenging work you do, the more grit you display in an action, the more your ACC and aMCC grow. The more they grow, the more likely they are to choose to struggle in the future. They will not make you enjoy a difficult task, they will just be more likely to tell you that it’s worth it.  

When you are asked to make a difficult choice or do something challenging and you fall back on those heuristic thinking models, you will have added a subconscious counterweight to the effort/reward scale, tipping the scales in favor of completing the task, even if it seems difficult or challenging. The question of “is it worth it” won’t even make it to your consciousness because you’ll be too busy putting in the work.  

Citations

(1) Tong Dandan, Zhu Haixue, Li Wenfu, Yang Wenjing, Qiu Jiang, Zhang Qinglin. Brain activity in using heuristic prototype to solve insightful problems. Behavioural Brain Research.Volume 253, 2013,Pages 139-144,ISSN 0166-4328. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166432813004166

(2) Sander, Robert. Recording a thought’s fleeing trip through the brain. UC Berkeley News. Jan. 17, 2018. Accessed April 25th, 2026  https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/01/17/recording-a-thoughts-fleeting-trip-through-the-brain/

(3) Touroutoglou A, Andreano J, Dickerson BC, Barrett LF. The tenacious brain: How the anterior mid-cingulate contributes to achieving goals. Cortex. 2020 Feb;123:12-29. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.09.011. Epub 2019 Oct 9. PMID: 31733343; PMCID: PMC7381101.

(4) Hart EE, Gerson JO, Zoken Y, Garcia M, Izquierdo A. Anterior cingulate cortex supports effort allocation towards a qualitatively preferred option. Eur J Neurosci. 2017 Jul;46(1):1682-1688. doi: 10.1111/ejn.13608. Epub 2017 Jun 21. PMID: 28543944; PMCID: PMC6442740.