Key Takeaways
- Less friction can help you instill new habits.
- More friction may help you engage with the world in meaningful ways.
- Use friction strategically.
“Alexa, add eggs to my shopping cart and tell Grubhub I’m hungry!”
It’s becoming increasingly easy to live a low-friction life—we can shop, set up deliveries to our front doors and schedule appointments by doing little more than clicking a button on a screen or barking an order into a smart device. And those of us with significant assets can go even further by hiring live-in nannies, private chefs and even chauffeurs.
But is trying to remove as much friction from our lives as possible helping us live our best lives? The answer is complicated, in large part because a situation that one person might describe as high-friction and challenging might be seen by another as entirely normal and easy.
Ultimately, it probably makes the most sense to minimize or remove friction in certain situations while keeping it (and even creating more of it) in others. The key is to understand the pros and cons of friction in our daily lives—and use that knowledge to harness friction strategically in ways that can move us closer to our goals and a more rewarding life.
With that in mind, here’s a closer look at the role that friction plays in our lives.
Benefits of a lower-friction life
The idea of making things easier on ourselves sounds like a no-brainer. And indeed, there are many reasons why reducing friction makes sense. These are just a few:
- It can help new, good habits stick. Less friction helps us build and cement new habits we desire. That’s important, given research showing that more than 90% of people who set New Year’s goals don’t achieve them. And while willpower is important, obstacles that inevitably arise on our path toward goals can easily overpower our best intentions. Reducing friction to essentially make that path flatter, smoother and wider can help us stay on track and moving in the desired direction.
- It can create a happier home environment. If you have kids living under your roof, you’re probably not going to eradicate friction. But it’s possible to reduce tension by implementing systems that help keep everyone organized. When items have designated areas and they’re where they are supposed to be, even the smallest actions and activities can occur without annoyances, questions and accusations.
Ways to reduce friction in your life
Not surprisingly, there are lots of steps you can take to mitigate friction in ways that achieve the types of benefits noted above.
- Set up your surroundings for new-habit success. Your environment impacts your habits. If an item you want is easily obtainable, for example, you’ll probably reach for it more often than if you have to constantly dig around to find it. Therefore, make it easy on yourself to access the stuff you need to pursue a goal or instill a habit. Some examples:
- Keep a filled water bottle handy.
- Pack or lay out your workout clothes the night before so there’s no decision-making required in the morning.
- Have healthy snacks at the ready—at work, at home, in the car.
- On Sunday, prepare healthy meals for the week.
- Keep a book beside your bed.
- Automate. Set up autopay for your regular monthly or quarterly bills. Schedule deliveries of products you know you need more of every week or every month. Set up digital reminders (on your computer, watch, phone) about daily tasks such as taking a stretch break every two hours. Automating the mundane chores and duties can free up both time and mental energy you can put to a higher use—or, if you prefer, you can take a nap.
- Stack your habits. Add a desired new habit to an already established action you take consistently. Example: After brushing your teeth each morning, do ten push-ups. By “stacking” a new activity on top of an existing one, you can reduce the friction of “finding the time” to do your new task.
- Hang hooks. Simply by hanging up hooks for coats, bags and the like in your entryway— and training the family to use them, of course—everyone can know exactly where to find items, averting disruptions, delays and tension.
Have portable chargers on hand. Tensions over tech devices with batteries about to die are commonplace these days. Portable chargers can be used on the go to ensure your phone is ready or your children’s video game systems are fully juiced up.
When friction in life is good for you
As much as some people may envision a friction-free life, it’s probably not the best goal to shoot for. For starters, the presence of friction can be crucial in breaking those bad habits that are holding us back from our best life. When we put obstacles in the way of an action, it becomes harder to automatically or mindlessly engage in that activity. Instead, our brains have to stop and confront the friction—potentially allowing us to make a different choice.
The upshot:
Reduce the hurdles preventing you from adopting desired new habits, but construct hurdles that block your bad habits.
Bigger picture, friction in our lives plays an important role in maintaining our resilience in the face of struggles. It doesn’t matter how much wealth or power you attain—you will face challenges that life throws at you. When you do, you want your friction “muscle” to be strong enough to deal with them well. A path that’s too smooth all the time can cause you to crumble at even small adversities.
Friction also helps keep us engaged with the world. A life in which everything is handed to us or done for us can ultimately be devoid of purpose, meaning or pleasure. For example, the “struggle” of walking or biking to the store to pick up food not only helps us better appreciate moments that are frictionless— it also opens up possibilities of running into neighbors or even having random interactions with people that make the day more interesting. Too often a frictionless life means a lack of engagement with the aspects of life that make our existence fun, unique, strange and meaningful.
Using friction strategically
These are some of the ways we can create friction for our own benefit:
- Move or get rid of objects. Want to stop overeating salty snacks or doomscrolling the news on your phone? Make it more difficult to overeat those snacks or scroll on that phone! Physically removing items from your environment so they’re gone or harder to access can do a lot to stop you from engaging with those items. If you can stop yourself from reflexively doing something, you stand a better chance of redirecting yourself.
- Implement timers and digital limits. Set daily screen time limits on your apps or phone to add more friction when you start to mindlessly scroll. Better yet, have your spouse set the limits so you don’t know the password to override them.
- Force yourself to wait. If you find yourself buying too many things impulsively, make yourself wait a few hours or even a few days before you hit the “buy” button. After that time, see if you even remember what you wanted to buy so badly—or if you still want the item as much now as you did then.
- Choose friction daily. Once a day, choose to do something in a way that’s less efficient than the easy, frictionless alternative. Go to the store instead of having food delivered. Call your friend and engage in a voice conversation instead of a text-based one—especially if it’s a tough conversation about a difficult situation. Read articles to answer a question you have rather than asking AI to answer it for you. By choosing a little friction each day, you can potentially keep your resilience muscle strong and reinforce the importance of being a part of the world—both the hard and the easy parts.
Conclusion
Life is meant to be lived well—and that process will mean we encounter friction, challenges and annoyances. In some cases, reducing that friction can improve our lives—but in others, we benefit by bumping up against it and having to push through. Look to navigate friction strategically as you seek to create a life of meaning and significance.
VFO Inner Circle Special Report
By John J. Bowen Jr.
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