Need motivation to do something or stop doing something?

Changing this one thing can help you do both

We all have projects or habits that we need some push to get going. We also have things that we do or habits that we would like to stop doing, because they are distracting or not helpful to us. There is one variable that we can tweak that can help us do either one: friction.

Friction comes originally from physics, and it is a resisting force created by an object’s surrounding when a motivating force is applied to an object. That model applies very well to productivity. If there is too much friction in the environment for tasks, projects, habits, etc. you want to start, then you will never start them. If there is too little friction in the environment for things you want to stop doing, you will face very little resistance to doing them, and will continue to do so. But for either of these, looking at what friction exists between you and doing those tasks, and tweaking that variable, you can make it much easier to do the things you want to do, and stop the things you don’t.

If you are trying to motivate yourself to start a task, you need to reduce the friction as much as possible. This friction sometimes has another name associated with it, called activation energy. Reducing the friction reduces the amount of activation energy required to get into a task.

I have touched on this idea a couple of times, regarding 2-Minute Tasks and making tasks visible in your environment. The point is you want something to be as close as ready to work on as you can make it. This means having it be as visible as possible, having all of your tools and materials set up in one place, so that you can literally sit down and start working practically immediately. That last state is the perfect description for zero friction; any small step you can make to get the task closer to that ideal arrangement is time well spent.

Thinking oppositely, if you want something to not happen, you need to introduce as much friction as possible to stop from going down that path. This is the sort of thing that you need to do to break undesirable habits. Also, when you know a certain set of steps will lead to a bad outcome, adding friction to those steps will make it harder to make the mistake.

I talked some about using friction to stop complusive habits on smartphones, but this works for anything where avoiding a certain kind of behavior would have a significant upside. For example, this is why businesses only give access to certain kind of activities — usually involving money — to a small group of trusted people. Having gatekeepers the other employees need to go through to access the company’s money — while frustrating for the employees — helps keep the company’s money from walking off.

A metaphor I like to use when thinking about applying friction to improve our productivity, I think about the model of the modern expressway. When you have a clear direction you want to go in, you want to make the trip in that direction as smooth as absolutely possible. You also want to make any dangerous diversions impossible by putting up guardrails, so any sort of misdirection doesn’t end up with you driving into a ditch or off a cliff. The expressway makes the right path easy, the guardrails make the wrong path hard.

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