H·02
Habits & Behaviour
Friction Beats Willpower
Twenty seconds of added effort kills a habit; twenty seconds removed creates one.
- Evidence
- proven
- Topic
- Habits
- Things to do
- 4
- Read
- 1 min
provenHow strong is the evidence?
Tested again and again, by different people, and it keeps coming out the same. You can lean on this.
- Thaler & Sunstein, Nudge (2008)
- Shawn Achor, The Happiness Advantage (2010)
- cafeteria-placement field studies
Why it works
Behaviour follows the path of least resistance far more reliably than it follows intention. Defaults and distances do the work that resolve cannot sustain.
What to do about it
- Put the guitar on a stand in the room you sit in. Put the guitar case in a cupboard.
- Log out of the app and delete the icon. Leave the password on paper in another room.
- Pre-commit the default: standing bank transfer, repeating calendar block, auto-renewing order.
- For anything you want less of, insert one deliberate obstacle — not three. One is enough and survives.
Where people go wrong
Treating a lapse as a character failure when it was a layout failure. Redesign the room before you rebuke yourself.
Read next
- Habits Live in Contexts, Not in YouAbout 43% of daily behaviour is repeated in the same context. Change the context and the habit has nothing to hold on to.proven
- Speech Is the Worst NoiseBackground speech you can make out words in degrades reading, writing and arithmetic. Meaningless noise at the same volume does not.solid
- Proximity and Repetition Make LikingWho you become close to is mostly a function of who you repeatedly, incidentally encounter.proven
- The If-Then PlanA goal becomes an action only when it names a trigger: “When X happens, I will do Y.”proven