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A key ingredient to sticking with our good habits is lowering the friction associated with completing a “good” action – any act that helps us reach our goals.
For me personally, I know minimizing friction is essential to sticking with almost anything, because I’m not good at completing tasks simply for the sake of meeting the expectation of completing it.
There either needs to be a strong internal motivation, which can be hard to generate for repetitive, mundane tasks. Or there needs to be seamless integration of some desired habit/action into usual life, like putting the book right next to the bed or placing sliced veggies where I can see them all day. Aka, low friction.
Better yet, I’ll automate anything that can be automated, which is the holy grail of removing friction. Perfect for monthly saving, investing, and giving, by the way.
The flipside of this strategy is using more friction to deter yourself from bad habits.
Enjoy spending money (that you don’t have) just a little too much? Rosemarie Groner advocates wrapping a pile of tape around your stack of credit cards and slipping this into a sealed bag with a note written to your future self.
A note designed to remind you exactly how you want to use – or rather not use – those cards. A note that may even implore that you please find another way, that doesn’t involve double-digit interest, to deal with whatever you’re facing. She used to place her bag in the back of the toilet tank.
Talk about friction, right?
Dialing up or down friction to decrease or increase the probability of certain actions works.
If you can’t find your sneakers, the likelihood of taking a walk is nil. If they’re placed in a handy bag on the passenger seat of your car, the likelihood of using them on your lunch break to walk instead of shop Amazon improves greatly.
And that’s why I love this concept so much.
You can make small, easy changes to increase or decrease the likelihood of something happening. You can titrate up the number of changes necessary until you get the result you want.
Which is often way easier than undergoing a massive change all at once, still unsure if you’ll follow through.
You may be unwilling to cut up your credit cards, even if they pose a serious problem for you. But what if you put your credit cards in your desk drawer instead of your wallet? You remove the autofill card info from your browser and deactivate Apple Pay and other auto payment methods?
Still not enough? Just ratchet up the friction.
Like, wrap them in tape with a strongly worded note to live in a bag in the toilet tank.
How could you start to increase friction on one of your undesired habits today? Or decrease (or completely eliminate) the friction on a desired habit you’re struggling to adopt?
It sounds simplistic, but there can be great power in such simplicity.
Before you try to increase your willpower, try to decrease the friction in your environment.
James Clear
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Under 2, an email series designed to share quick bites of wisdom to empower your financial journey (while keeping it short). Be sure to sign-up below to get these messages in your inbox.
All for now,
Lindsey