Unlock Your Desired Behaviors With Friction

How we can take advantage of the paths of least resistance

We’re conditioned to favor what’s easy

We default to actions that take the least amount of effort.

We love to hit the snooze button, scroll social media, order fast food, watch Netflix, and play video games.

They’re accessible, take little to no effort, and make us comfortable & feel good in the moment.

The problem is, easy actions rarely help us unlock our best selves.

Easy actions = zero growth

Easy actions don’t help us achieve our biggest ambitions.

Easy actions take us further away from being the person we dreamed of becoming.

Easy actions keep us stagnant.

Tough actions = continuous growth

On the other side, tough actions help us unlock our best selves.

But they take a lot of effort, energy, and resilience to do.

We struggle to wake up early, eat healthy, exercise, meditate, read books, learn new skills, write every day, and build a side project.

These actions stretch us beyond what we’re used to and make us uncomfortable.

But they’re key to developing ourselves so we can achieve our biggest aspirations.

So how can we do less of what doesn’t serve us, and more of what does?

We can shape our behavior through friction

We can create an environment that nudges us to the right actions by adding & removing friction in our day.

By adding friction to actions that don’t serve us, we’re more likely to avoid them because of their inconvenience.

Make the easy actions difficult

Here’s a few ways to add friction to easy actions that don’t serve us:

• Put your phone in another room before sleeping so it’s hard to snooze
• Disable notifications so you have fewer chances to get distracted
• Set a time limit on social media apps so you get blocked after the limit
• Install BlockSite on Chrome and block the sites you waste time on
• Delete UberEats so you have to go on your laptop to order fast food
• Hide the TV remote so that turning on the TV is a chore

The goal is to add as many obstacles in front of the actions that you want to do less of.

The more difficult and annoying these actions are, the less likely we’re going to do them.

By creating restrictions, we free our time for activities that better serve our goals.

Make the difficult actions easy

We can remove friction to actions we want to do more of so they’re easier and less challenging to do.

A few ways we can remove friction to actions that make us better:

• Sleep in your gym clothes so you can work out right after getting out of bed
• Plan your schedule the night before so your day’s planned in the morning
• Keep your book on your chair so you have to pick it up when you sit down
• Chop your veggies on the weekend so cooking’s easier during the week
• Put your journal & pen on top of your laptop so you can write before logging in
• Write important emails or messages the night before so you can send them the next day

If we can shorten the steps to tackling these tasks, we’ll be more likely to do them.

The key is to reduce the mental and physical energy required to do the things that help us reach our goals.

To the point where not doing these tasks becomes more of a chore than doing it.

Once we create this environment, we’ve hacked our paths of least resistance to serve us.

We can create an environment that unlocks our best selves

We live in a time where distractions and comfort control us.

We can spend weeks, months, even years living our lives from the passenger seat.

By reacting to what happens around us, and doing what’s most convenient & accessible.

So many live their lives as consumers of their environment.

But we can flip that script. We can create an environment that serves our aspirations so we can unlock our best selves.

By adding friction to behaviors that keep us stuck, we free up time and energy to take on meaningful actions.

And by removing friction to behaviors that move us forward, we can use the free time with intention and clarity.

We have the power to shape our environment so that the path of least resistance unlocks our best selves.

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