Reducing Friction Makes Starting Things Easier

Starting is the hardest part.

When you want to start a new project, you can give yourself any number of reasons why you shouldn’t.

These reasons can be a fear of trying something new, of being laughed at, because we’re too scared, because we don’t want to put effort in, or a million other things.

The result is that at the end of the year, we’ve not completed what we said we were going to do, and we’re all upset and pissed off with ourselves.

Yet there’s any easy way of fixing this.

Reduce the Friction

There’s a thing called the two-minute rule that can be applied to starting a task.

When you get those feelings of resistance building up — all those reasons why you shouldn’t do something — you can use the two-minute rule to reduce friction.

If you know you should walk more, but can’t get yourself to do it: say you'll only walk for two minutes.

Or if you know you should write more, only write for two minutes.

Or if you need to clean the house, only vacuum for two minutes.

The idea is to reduce the task down to the absolute bare minimum you can do.

And the result is that you'll find it much easier to start, and then be more likely to continue the desired activity beyond the minimal start-up task.

The more you do this, the more your brain will learn that work isn't something that's too hard or too scary and should be avoided. You’ll gradually begin to prove to yourself that you can do anything you set your mind to.

And, crucially, the easier you'll find it to start doing anything.