Friction.
Remember friction? From physics class. Ugh. I remember doing these calculations to see if the angle of the slope was steep enough to cause the box to start sliding. Lots of trigonometry and cosines and sines.
But we're not going to talk about that sort of friction. Nope.
The sort of friction we're talking about is really simple.
Reduce friction - make things easy, quick, short
Add friction - make things harder, slower and farther
Forming Good Habits
The trick to forming good habits is to reduce the amount of friction in three key areas: time, distance, effort.
Want to do weights everyday? Move them out of the basement gym, into your home office. Put the 5 lb weights on your desk... See, reduce the distance and the effort. Once you're doing 5 lb weights in between meetings, you can eventually up it to 10 lbs.
What to get more people to sign up as organ donors? Make the sign-up process super easy and seamless with a QR code and a process that only takes 2 minutes. Reduce the time and the effort.
Want to remember to bring a reusable mug/cup for your Timmies/Starbucks run? Have it by the front door or on the counter, and keep a spare in your car.
There are so many different ways to reduce time, distance and effort. I wrote a blog about it a few months ago. Want to get your day off on the right foot, make sure you "park downhill" the night before. Have your work-out gear laid out, have a full water bottle ready to go. Make it easy. Make it quick. Make it short. Reduce the friction, so that all you have to do is pop in the clutch and you are rolling downhill with no effort.
Breaking Bad Habits
Soooo... if we form good habits by reducing friction, then obviously, we can break bad habits by adding friction to... time, distance, effort.
I've known some of this for a while. I've got a bit of a sweet tooth so if there is chocolate in the house, I will find it and eat it. Yes, even the baking chocolate. Ask my mother... When I was a kid, my sister and I would raid the baking cupboard and eat the baking chocolate... or the chocolate chips. Mom would want to do some baking and couldn't figure out where all the chocolate went! Anyhoo... Today's Solution: don't bring chocolate into the house. Clamp down hard on this!
Yes, there is a corner store a 3 minute walk away, but it is downhill to the store and uphill on the way home. And that is enough friction to stop me from walking down there. And driving that short distance just seems ridiculous, at least to me. Plus... I don't want to spend $3 on a chocolate bar that costs $1.25 at the regular grocery store. That is highway robbery!
So for me... adding cost to the friction equation also works. Make something more expensive, or with a financial penalty... and I'm easily swayed in the opposite direction.
They (the scientists) have done studies... if you slow down elevator doors by 26 seconds, more people will get impatient and take the stairs. If you remove vending machines from schools, you (theoretically) make it harder for teenagers to snack on junk food. Judging by my niece... some teens just go to the nearest corner store or Timmies!
It's called the Principle of Least Effort. Habits are kind of like water and take the path of least resistance. So if you want to make a good habit, you need to make it as easy and frictionless as possible. The idea is to change your environment as opposed to trying to change things like willpower or discipline.
Frictionless Bad Habits
It works the other way too... we can reduce the friction for any habit... even bad ones. A lot of companies use this to their advantage. Want to buy something on Amazon? One-click shopping - super easy! And today, you can just say "Hey Alexa, buy "whatever"... and it happens. Very little friction there... and that can make it very easy for a bad shopping habit to form.
Credit cards and debit cards now have the tap feature so you can be in and out of stores super quick. Heck... credit cards make it super easy to buy something even when you DON"T have the money! Hence... credit card debt...
Netflix... we are trying to watch the latest Loki season, one episode at a team, making it last. But as one episode ends and the credits roll... the next episode queues up and before you know it, 20 seconds have gone by and the next episode is starting... automatically. "Oh heck... we might as well watch the next episode... just one more..." Netflix made "binge-watching" a thing...
Soooo many things are designed to make it easy for those little bad habits to get more and more deeply entrenched.
Knowledge, Awareness & Willpower are Not Enough
But knowledge is power, right? And once we are aware of our bad habits, we can choose differently? We have free choice, we have the willpower! We are disciplined!!
Meh. Not so much. Very few people can go "cold-turkey" and make it through the other side. Oh sure, inhibition and self-denial work for a while. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might regularly wonder... "What the heck?... she is doing ANOTHER sugar detox?"
Yep. Rinse. Repeat. That's what trying to rely on willpower does.
And this is not a 21st century problem... Does this quote sound familiar?
"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but [I do] what I hate I do."
Yeah. St. Paul struggled with this too. Cause it's not about willpower... or knowledge or awareness. It's all about friction.
If we want to break a bad habit, we need to modify our environment to add friction. If something is more difficult to do, or takes longer... or is farther away... we will tend to do it less often.
Adding Friction to Chocolate
Let's take my love affair with chocolate. I already know that I can't keep it in the house, otherwise it all disappears. Yay! There's knowledge! There's awareness!
Not so fast... I go to Starbucks during the day and... they have a chocolate brownie that is my kryptonite. Soooo... I have been successfully denying myself chocolate at home, but the craving is still there. What do you think happens when I go to Starbucks? Maybe I'm feeling a tiny bit frazzled or think I deserve a "reward" or... whatever. And bingo... chocolate brownie is on my plate!
Sooo... are there other options? Well... here's my plan.
I am no longer going to deny myself chocolate. I am actually going to keep some chocolate in the house. Yep. But it is going to be seriously dark chocolate. And a Dark Burnt-Almond Cadbury or Dark Rittersport bar do not make the cut. I am talking 70%, 80%... even 95% dark chocolate. Have you ever tried a 95% dark chocolate bar? It is seriously bitter!
So, the plan is, when I'm at home, and get that chocolate craving, I can have a square of dark chocolate. Trust me... one square is usually enough. Right now, I am starting with 70% but I have some 90% as well. If I do want a second square later in the day, that's fine, but it's going to be the 90% chocolate. I take one nibble of that and I am good. You can't really binge on dark chocolate... it's not that sort of taste sensation.
If I want something sweet, I go and have an apple, because compared to 90% chocolate... an apple is a lovely, sweet, delicious, juicy thing!
As for the chocolate brownie... I now carry a cut up apple with me when I go out, and some almonds. I'm also thinking of bringing a half square of 90% chocolate with me... as back-up. The idea here is... if I get hungry, I have the apple. If I have a serious chocolate craving, I can have the dark chocolate.
As my palate gets used to the dark chocolate, I will up the first square from 70 to 78% and then 85% until I'm doing 90% for the first and 95% for the second.
So I am making it easier, quicker, shorter to have an apple or a bit of dark chocolate. I'm also making it harder, longer and farther to get crap chocolate.
We have little chocolate bars that we put in the welcome basket for our Airbnb guests... I've now tucked those down into the "pit" by the front door. The "pit" is a floor hatch by our front door, that leads to our little mini-basement (under the stairs space). It is a serious pain-in-the-butt to move the entrance bench, all the shoes, the rugs and floor mats, haul open the hatch door, prop it open and then go down and get a chocolate bar... and put it all back. So far, that added friction is working quite well. It's the "out of sight - out of mind" technique...
Out of Sight - Out of Mind
The other aspect of the brownie situation would be to add some more friction to the process... With Starbucks you earn points with every purchase and once you hit a certain threshold you can redeem them for things like... tea... or chocolate brownies (100 points). Who can say "no" to a FREE brownie!!!?? Not me. Although I could get a free tea too... but why "waste" those points on a tea....
I could just ditch the points program. But the thrifty person in me likes to get things for free... And there is really no way for me to say "Can you ban me from ordering a chocolate brownie". Although... if I let the points accumulate until it reaches 200 stars... I could get myself a tasty, relatively healthy snack box that has things like apple slices, cheese, nuts, peanut butter... That would be better? Maybe.
Here's an option that just popped into my head...
I use the Starbucks app on my phone to pay for my tea. But as I swipe the app open, it tells me in big, bold font, how many points I have. When I see 103 points... I think... FREE Brownie!!!!! But... what if I stopped using the app? I still have my Starbucks Gold card... I could use that instead. I got out of the habit of using the card during Covid when nobody wanted to touch it and swipe it... But if I use the card, I won't see the points building up and... that might just work! Going to try it!
Step 1 - remove the Starbucks app from my phone... (gasp)... Done.
No mobile order for me anymore, but I didn't really do those... Back to the old-fashioned card. Fingers-crossed.
N.B. IT WORKED!!! I wrote this in mid-October... and it is now early January and...October 18 was my last Starbucks brownie. Not seeing those Starbucks Rewards available to me makes a difference! As does having a cut apple in my bag... and a square of dark chocolate. Yay me!
Another Idea - The Kitchen Safe
You can put your cookies, candies, chips, phone, drugs, Xbox controller, car keys, credit cards into the box, set the timer and... voila... they are out of reach. Uh-huh... that's a well-spent $80... but maybe it would work for someone.
Although there are already websites that will tell you how to hack into your Kitchen Safe. I can already tell you that a hammer would probably work. Amazon has replacement bases for the Kitchen Safe...
This is apparently "America's #1 Habit Breaker" as seen on Shark Tank. Seriously? Oh... and it has charging access so your phone can be charging while it's in the penalty box.
Hey, whatever works. Our "pit" works similarly... it increases the friction to get at whatever we are craving.
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