Over the last few years, I’ve had significant trouble maintaining the motivation to finish my projects and complete work when I need to.
The best strategy I’ve developed for managing my motivation has been to increase and decrease friction.
what is friction?
The actual definition of “friction” is physics-related—it’s a force that results when to objects rub against each other. Usually, it results in slowing things down. For example, a ball rolling down the street will slow down as it moves due to friction.
In this context I’m using “friction” more metaphorically: friction is anything that slows me down or makes it more difficult to accomplish a task.
how do I use friction?
There’s two main ways I use friction to help manage my motivation.
The first, and most obvious, is to reduce the friction to complete tasks that I want to encourage. For example, to simplify my writing setup so that I can simply edit a file on my computer to draft a blog post instead of needing to go to a password-protected page on my site and paste in HTML code of the article.
I’ve also reduced friction by adding keyboard shortcuts to my setup to simplify navigating to locations or programs that I need to use frequently. Similarly, my physical setup of my computer hardware facilitates easily transitioning between classes (where I need my laptop on the go) and sitting at my desk with a comfortable keyboard.
These things make it easier and simpler to start writing or coding or doing schoolwork.
The other use of friction is to increase the friction to complete tasks I want to discourage. For example, take video games. I don’t play video games often, but when I do they have a tendency to monopolize my time and keep me from completing my tasks; it’s easier and simple (ie, less friction) to play a video game than to write a blog post, so my natural inclination is to play that game.
My solution has been to lock all of my games in a tomb that requires a flash drive and password to access, so that I (1) can’t access games when studying at the library and (2) have to type the password “I know what I’m doing” in when at home, meaning I essentially have to consciously lie to myself to open a video game when I should be working.
A more realistic example is my posting on the Fediverse—that has a much more subtle hold on me and it’s easy to decide to open up tut (my client) for a few minutes when I should be studying or even when bored in a lecture. Similarly, I’ve locked that in a tomb so that I can’t access it while in class or studying at the library.
There are easy ways to get around these blocks, but the important thing is that I’ve increased the friction: I can use Fedi, but I have to either re-download and configure my client or use a different client that I enjoy less. I can play a video game, but I won’t have access to my saves and would lose my progress.
Specifically, I’m increasing the friction to begin procrastinating; I don’t particularly want to make it harder to actually relax, that would ruin my legitimate free time.
The temptation then, though, is to simply never switch from relaxation time back to work time. So, as a response, I’ve also decreased the friction for that switch.
With a single keyboard shortcut (super+alt+s) I can instantly lock my access and forcibly close any open programs I’ve locked up. This means a single moment of “hmm I should be studying” is enough to remove my access to temptations and force me to go through the high-friction process of switching back, making it easier just to get to work.
Similarly, I’ve set up a script to close those tombs on a timer. I can even set up a timer to automatically close a tomb after a certain amount of time from unlocking it, forcing me to go through the high-friction unlocking regularly to maintain access to those temptations. I haven’t done that yet, but it’s an option I have.
conclusion
I went a little into the technical weeds there at the end, but I think my point was probably clear. I decrease the friction both to accomplish tasks I want to encourage and to switch to those tasks. I increase the friction to switch to procrastination and make it low-friction to stop procrastinating.
Have you set up anything similar for yourself? Are there any areas you can see in your workflow that you should increase or decrease friction? I’d love to hear your thoughts; my email is below.
