The notion that individuals adapt their behaviors in ways that avoid effortful processing is pervasive in psychology. In the current set of experiments, we provide a test of a novel cue utilization account of how individuals decide which course of action is the least effortful. In particular, we contrast the influences of time costs and demands on executive control with the influence of an available effort cue in controlling behavior within the context of effort avoidance. Using a variant of the demand selection task (DST) that specifically focuses on making effort-based decisions, we provide evidence that effort avoidance behaviors can be dissociated from both time costs and demands on executive control in a manner predicted by a cue-utilization account. Specifically, in situations where these determinants were pitted against one another, individuals primarily relied on exploiting the more salient effort cues associated with stimulus rotation in developing their effort preferences (i.e., individuals more often avoided rotated stimuli), rather than avoiding options associated with higher time costs and higher demands placed on the executive control system. Cue-utilization’s relation to extant theories of cognitive control as well as novel predictions are considered. *Note (7/13/2017): Experiment 3 has been removed from the revised manuscript. It now will appear in a separate set of experiments/manuscript.