The Desire for Tedium

I recently received a direct-mail promotion for a house cleaning service, the thrust of which was that the service would rescue me from the tedious tasks of cleaning my own home.   I think that copy point might resound with most people most of the time, but at just that moment, it struck me as something that was utterly unappealing and even undesirable.

Perhaps it was the state of mind I was in at the time, or my own perverse habit of busying myself with menial tasks at the end of an unproductive day to gain some sense of accomplishment.   There are many days, and sometimes entire weeks, in which my activities at work have been so frustratingly unproductive that I came home and set myself to some chore that would give me the satisfaction of having done something: I may have spent nine hours in back-to-back meetings in which people merely chewed the cud without making any real decisions, but after thirty minutes effort the kitchen floor is clean, and it was the only productive thing I had gotten done all day.

In that sense, their offer to relieve me of my tedium struck me as wholly unappealing – in that it would rob me of the opportunity to engage in a task that would give me a sense of accomplishment.   Granted, housework is menial and not generally regarded as particularly enjoyable – but like most menial tasks it conveys a sense of satisfaction in being able to take action and immediately perceive the benefits.

I also have the sense that this may also be true of the tedium of certain commercial interactions: that in some instances individuals expect to invest a fair amount of unpleasant effort in obtaining something that they need, and that the product is a reward for the acquisition process.   I don’t expect this is universal, and for most low-cost and low-involvement purchases a tedious or unpleasant acquisition process would cause them to reject the offer as requiring too much cost (in terms of effort rather than price).    But when a given product comes at a high cost and high involvement, there is the expectation that effort will be required.

Moreover, simplifying the acquisition process diminishes the value of the product as a reward for the effort of acquiring it – much in the way that a person who rides a cable car to the top of a mountain does not have the same sense of satisfaction as someone who climbed the mountain.   It could even be speculated that making the process easier makes the goal less appealing simply because it is effortless to achieve.

The example of mountain climbing takes this meditation on an odd turn, in considering that most recreational and leisure activities are undertaken for the satisfaction of accomplishment.   The person who bakes a cake from scratch feels they have done something, while the one who uses a boxed mix enjoys the same benefit (though quality is arguable) at less effort, and does not feel a sense of achievement (or if they do, the first individual would consider that to be unwarranted – having done nothing, they have no right to claim their work is a valid “accomplishment” afterward).

To shift back to the commercial realm, this is likely the pleasure in shopping.   The customer who finds the perfect outfit for an occasion is pleased to have the outfit, but the effort she put into shopping for it accentuates the value of the reward.  Compliment her on the outfit, and she will tell the story of the various stores she visited and the other effort she placed into finding it.  The achievement is more important even than the item that was obtained.

My sense is that this grants a certain trophy-value to possessions that are difficult to obtain, but also diminishes the emotional attachment to those that are easy to obtain.  In the clothes-shopping example, the outfit itself causes less satisfaction than the experience of obtaining it.  Had the shopper found the outfit in the first store she visited, she would have no story, and regard the outfit as just another set of garments – perhaps clothing that was “appropriate” for the occasion but not “the perfect” because achieving perfection requires effort.

It may merit further consideration, or research to support this hypothesis, but I have the sense it would bear out – and as such it begs the question as to whether making something cheaper or easier to obtain might be counterproductive to creating customer satisfaction, and that the assumption that cheap-and-easy is always better should likely be abandoned in favor of a more deliberate consideration of the degree to which a customer is not only willing, but also quite interested, in experiencing tedium or difficulty for a given purchase.