The best book on habits I’ve ever read is ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. I recommend it mostly because in every other book I’ve seen potentially helpful suggestions, but no real overarching framework. Clear breaks mentality and psychology down into something useable and customisable, without judgement.
I’m due for a reread, but one of the things that stuck with me since I read it last is the concept of what my friends and I call friction, and its partner inertia.
I usually solve inertia with ‘habit chains’: that is, bundling different activities together so that I can move from one to the next without much new activation energy. Clear talks about this too, but in different terms.
Lately habit chains haven’t been working so well because my chains, when not minded well, can start running long until I feel pressed for time and overwhelmed. A few different things have made it so habit chains which were an okay length are now too long, and cutting them short nerfs their usefulness for particular tasks, requiring me to either chain them onto another habit (which is still a chain) or find a different cue.
And we come to my writing chair and writing in it. I’m not, currently, in a position where I’m expecting to write — but ‘showing up’ is an important habit-formation technique too. The problem was that I just didn’t want to sit in my chair, even when I wasn’t doing anything but sitting in it anyway. I know the reasons why, and came to the conclusion that that habit wasn’t serving me currently, but the writing chair is usually where I go to Get Things Done, and if I don’t have a place to do that — well, I’m fighting myself there.
Enter friction. Activation energy is friction, and where before my writing chair habit was chained to something else, that made the chain too long for the mental place I am now.
Friction is an asshole, because it makes things seem harder than they are, even if they’re easy. It’s also, as Clear describes, a tool, because you can reduce friction in something you’re resistant to doing while inducing friction in something you do without thinking. (Not necessarily something you want to do — if you’re scrolling tumblr but don’t actually want to be, you’ve been absconded by a habit, not making a choice. Habits work against us too.)
For me, reducing and inducing friction on my laptop means making use of passwords and alternate laptop accounts. I have a main account and a writing account on my laptop; the writing account gives me internet access (for research) and writing programs (for obvious) but has nothing else, and nothing except my writing folders synced so I can’t access my cloud distractions. The problem is that unless I’m in my writing chair, I don’t tend to use it.
Enter judicious use of friction. Windows login these days has a PIN option. My main account had a PIN and my writing account didn’t. I’ve now switched those so my main account takes longer to sign into and my writing account is easier. I’ve also changed up my screen saver settings so I get bumped to the login screen every time it comes on, which means that every time, I get a choice as to which account to use.
Has it worked so far? Nebulously. Habits take time to institute. I may have made a mistake making the PIN to my writing account a new one. I think I’ll make that PIN the same one I was using on my main account, because that already has muscle memory attached to it. And as an environment, my writing account does feel like I’m ‘settling’ for something temporary instead of ‘making myself comfortable’, so I think I need to put more effort into curating the space to make it welcoming, instead of a grudging stop-off on my way to comfy cyberspace.
But the use of my writing account now feels like more of an option than it did before, no matter where I’m sitting, where previously I felt limited to the physical chair. So, I’ll continue to tweak, to make my writing account frictionless and my main account a little more friction-full, and see how I go.
Either way, very often just moving the friction around can open something up that wasn’t visible before, and it’s something I try to employ when I can.
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