Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World · chapter 2 · id deep-work-c2-08-the-principle-of-least-resista

“The Principle of Least Resistance: without clear productivity feedback, knowledge workers default to easiest behaviors (email, meetings) rather than difficult deep work. This draws from Zipf's Principle of Least Effort (1949).”

holdsconfidence: high⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending

Receipts

George Kingsley Zipf -- Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort (1949)source alive

Zipf's 1949 work (573 pp, 7,600+ citations) established that humans naturally gravitate toward minimizing effort in pursuit of goals.

Peter Drucker -- Knowledge-Worker Productivity, California Management Review (1999)paywalled — manual check queued

Knowledge worker productivity is fundamentally harder to measure than manual labor. Organizations confuse busyness with actual productivity. Without clear metrics, the path of least resistance dominates.

This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us — corrections are loud here.