ABSTRACT
The view that as expertise develops, effort diminishes is widespread. Indeed, it is sometimes said that as expertise increases, both effort and agency decrease. I argue that support for this inverse relationship between expertise on the one hand and effort and agency on the other is weaker than is often thought and to offer an opposing theme: that experts generally act effortfully when engaging in actions in their domain of skill, and their effort does not generally interfere with their skills. For support, I distinguish everyday expertise from professional-level expertise, explore the phenomenon of expertise-induced amnesia, and analyze both Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow and the Taoist concept of the wu-wei. I ultimately suggest that expert action is characterized by conscious effort and that the experience of such effort encompasses an experience of agency.
