As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and personal development fiends love to talk about habits. And it makes sense because the right habits can help to remove decision fatigue, free up space for creativity, streamline your business or life, and support you in moving towards your goals.
And yet, cultivating new habits (or breaking unhelpful ones) can be a real challenge! That’s why I thought I’d share a quick tip that has made a noticeable difference in adjusting my habits.
It’s all about the friction!
Put simply, if you want to build a new habit you want to make it as smooth as possible (remove friction). And conversely, to break an unhelpful habit, you want to make it more challenging (add friction).
Here are 3 examples I’ve personally used to increase the friction for undesirable habits:
- To reduce social media use, I moved all the icons to the second screen on my phone. This meant that instead of unlocking then tapping straight to Instagram, I added the step of swiping to the next screen. Just this small addition brought attention to how often I was opening my apps, and adding the tiniest amount of extra time was enough for me to catch myself and realise I was doing it from habit, not interest.
You might like to go the extra step and remove the apps from your phone all together, so you add the friction of having to be at your computer to mindlessly scroll…
- Close my email when I’m not using it. This one I’ve just started doing, and I feel like a sausage that it’s taken me so long. I have long recognised the false sense of productivity that comes from faffing about with emails, and it’s been years since I set the expectation that I’m not checking emails very often. And yet… you can be sure I always have that tab open in my browser 😬 For some reason I decided this week was the time to change that, and I’ve been intentionally closing my email much more often. What I hadn’t realised was just how often I go looking for that tab to get a little dopamine hit. Not to mention, if I’m really honest, there have been plenty of times when I see an email and think “Oh I need to come back to that when I have time to think about the response.”
Now – as many who came before me have already figured out – I go into my inbox intentionally, to process and action what’s there, instead of filling my brain with noise when I don’t have the space to actually do anything about it. Here’s hoping I have the willpower to get that one to stick!
- Keep less unhealthy food at home. I love me some salty snacks and most of the time I’ll have some on hand. Now, I’m not interested in restricted eating, weight or size goals, or any of that bullshit. I believe in eating what makes you feel good. But there are times when the balance tips too far in the direction of less nourishing and/or highly processed foods (so I no longer feel particularly good) and I need to be more mindful.
For me, the easiest way is to stop buying that stuff for awhile – because if it’s within easy reach, my taste buds beat out my willpower every time. Then, if I’m craving something, the decision becomes: do I want this badly enough that I’ll make a trip to the shops? I’ve added time and friction to really consider the habitual instinct and give my willpower a chance to take charge.
The flipside, then, is to remove friction around habits you want to create.
For example, when I moved all my social media apps, I also moved the Kindle app front and centre on my phone’s home screen. That way, when I unlock it out of mindless habit, that’s the first thing I see and I might read instead of scrolling. Another way to read more, if you’d like to, is to keep an actual book nearby (I have one on my coffee table and one on my bedside) so you see it and grab it. The flipside of my food example above (for me) is to buy fruit, cherry tomatoes, and baby carrots – so it’s a real grab-and-munch situation, no prep or thought required.
Now, it’s your turn. What habits would you like to change? Where do you need to increase or decrease the friction to support your intentions? We don’t need big, sweeping changes – small tweaks can make all the difference!
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