The Evils of Effort Justification

I remember the first time I had a 'deck' reviewed by my manager at Deloitte.

I'd spent weeks agonising over every last detail on the now hundred-slide presentation - from the actual content and recommendations based on thousands of rows of data I'd waded through, all the way through to the right on-brand RGB colour combination.

We sat down to go through the feedback.

30 minutes later, the deck had been slashed in half.

I was gutted. Not only because it was a pretty brutal process. But mainly because of the hours I'd wasted on slides that the client would never even know existed.

I'd spent most of the meeting arguing in defence of each slide that had been 'cut'. It was effort justification at its worst; the longer I'd spent on the slide, the more vociferous my argument became.

I lacked the ability to cut through the complexity, and land the important points.

Since then, I've seen (and frankly, been guilty of) 'effort justification' hindering many presentations.

But even worse, I've seen it damage many companies; from resulting in needlessly complicated tech stacks ('I spent years developing this piece of software, we can't throw it away'), all the way through to encountering clients with hundreds of seemingly endless costly live workstreams ('we've already spent £X0,000 on this project, we can't stop now').

Do you have that friend who had spent 5 years studying for something, decided they don't like it, but haven't (and probably won't) quit?

Or how about that article you wrote that's probably crap but you've spent all day thinking about it, so you write it on LinkedIn and publish it anyway...?!

Effort Justification is a dangerous bias that can not only greatly hinder decision making in general, but even be used as a tool to manipulate you into joining a cult.

So what can you do about it?

1) Get Feedback.

Eliciting feedback or advice from friends or colleagues who haven't already expanded effort in the task or decision will help give you a balanced and unbiased view.

2) Be Self-Aware.

When you're editing your own work ask yourself whether you really need to keep that slide or sentence. Does it really add to the narrative or provide the reader with important additional information? Or is effort justification at play?

3) Consider whether the effort is truly wasted...

Consider that without spending 5 years studying for x you would never have known you didn't enjoy it, and would always have regretted it. Or if you hadn't spent the time creating slide x, you wouldn't have been able to weave together the story you eventually created.