Sub-shift
“CHOSEN DIFFICULTY”
Customers will want more say over which parts of an activity remain theirs.
A beginner asks for a hint. The software supplies the answer, the polished result and three alternatives. It has done more than requested and taken away the thing the person wanted to try.
As assistance becomes more capable, “CHOSEN DIFFICULTY” follows a different consumer demand: help me take part at the level I choose. That might mean simplifying preparation while leaving the central activity alone, or offering guidance without completing the work.
This is a plausible evolution of convenience, rather than a rejection of it. Someone may welcome automated booking, equipment selection and a shopping list, then want to cook the meal themselves. The value lies in separating a desired challenge from the chores attached to it.
The result is only part of the purchase
The 2018 effort-paradox review by Inzlicht, Shenhav and Olivola describes effort as something people can both avoid and value. An easier route to an outcome may therefore coexist with demand for doing it the harder way. [77]
For a customer, the activity can bring absorption, progress, company or a satisfying memory of overcoming a problem. An automatically produced result may serve a different need altogether. Over the next few years, we expect more products to offer explicit choices about assistance as consumers become familiar with both possibilities.
If you design a creative tool, a lesson or an experience, find out which part people most want to remain responsible for. A critique can help without rewriting. A workshop can remove awkward logistics without making its participants spectators. Let the preference change: an exhausted person is allowed to choose the shortcut.
Do not sell exclusion as achievement
There is no useful challenge in a service someone cannot access. Accessibility support, understandable instructions and appropriate equipment can make chosen effort possible. Withholding them does not make the experience more authentic.
Status can complicate this market. A time-consuming practice may become a badge available mainly to people with time and money. You can offer different ways to participate without ranking customers by how little assistance they needed.
The commercial test is whether people value the activity enough to return when an acceptable finished result is readily available. Some will. Others came to you for the result in the first place. A well-designed offer can serve both, while making clear which experience each person is buying.
Early signs of change.
by TrendWatching
1 closely related example from the Innovation Database. Each helps explain an aspect of the shift. None establishes that the whole forecast will happen.
A flight becomes time to write someone a postcard
India Post and airline IndiGo ran a handwritten-postcard campaign.
The person keeps the writing rather than outsourcing it; the effort helps give the message meaning.
Why this example is here
A one-day, non-AI campaign: adjacent inspiration for choosing what to do personally, not evidence that AI caused a return to letter writing.
Original sourceEditorial selection · reviewed 1 Nov 2026
Dates distinguish launches, announcements and substantial updates. Examples with a more indirect connection are labelled.
See the full selection for “MEANING AFTER EFFICIENCY”THE SOURCE NOTESFollow the thinking 1 source · what they show and where their limits lie
Sources and further reading
These sources inform the article. A product announcement describes an offer, not how widely people use it. Arguments and imagined futures are kept separate from observed results.
Effort can be costly and valued; not evidence of an AI-era consumer trend.
About this research edition
This article draws on selected sources and our interpretation of their implications for consumers. The wider collection contains 50 articles and original illustrations. We have not read everything by everyone on the reading list, calculated the probability of each future or established worldwide adoption. The collection is not exhaustive.
The illustrations are AI-generated, with a visual approach informed by TrendWatching’s 2024 and 2025 reports. They depict ideas rather than observed events. If an article’s central idea changes, its image needs another look. Small edits need not mean a new illustration; automatic replacement is not active.
Each innovation has a source, a review date and an explanation of its relevance and limits. Some are early signs of the change; others offer a useful comparison. None proves the forecast. Monthly monitoring and automatic selection of new examples are not running.