Make behavior easy or difficult
The easier it is to perform a behavior, the more likely we are to engage in it.
Are you aware of how your environment influences your behavior?
Do you often take the path of least resistance?
Would you like to learn how to make behavior change easier?
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Boost your chances of successfully building a new habit by making the behavior easy, and increase your chances of breaking an existing habit by making it difficult.
Driving and restraining forces
We can understand our behavior as being shaped by forces, much like physical objects respond to forces such as gravity. Driving forces propel us forward toward where we want to go, like tailwinds, while restraining forces hold us back, like headwinds. Restraining forces are a form of friction that make desired behavior more difficult. Some of these forces come from within ourselves—like our life purpose, personal values, personal goals, mindsets, thoughts, and feelings—while others come from our environment, everything outside ourselves, such as our surroundings, the people in our lives, and even our devices. This dynamic is captured in Kurt Lewin’s well-known equation: B = f(P,E), meaning that Behavior is a function of both the Person and the Environment.
For example, imagine you’re trying to stick to a fitness routine. The driving forces might include your desire for better health, feeling more energetic, or wanting to stay active as you get older. On the other hand, the restraining forces could be things like irregular work hours, feeling tired after a long day, or struggling to stay motivated. This ongoing push and pull—where your driving forces encourage you and your restraining forces hold you back—affects your ability to maintain your fitness routine.
We tend to underestimate how much our environment shapes our behavior. We often believe our actions are mainly driven by our intentions and willpower, which can make us fail to see how friction affects our ability to act. This tendency, known as the introspection illusion, makes us feel more in control of our choices than we really are, causing us to overlook how outside factors influence us. As a result, we often rely on willpower to make changes instead of adjusting our environment. When we don’t succeed, we may blame ourselves for lacking willpower. However, it would be more effective to reduce the friction in our surroundings.
The path of least resistance
Humans tend to favor tasks that require the least effort because our brains have evolved to save energy whenever possible. We naturally follow the "law of least effort," preferring to take the easiest route to get things done. Once a behavior becomes a habit, it effectively becomes the path of least resistance.
This tendency to conserve energy can be useful because it keeps us from spending too much time and effort on unimportant tasks. For example, while grocery shopping, we might skip comparing every brand of cereal and just pick a good enough option. This saves time and mental energy, allowing us to focus on more important things. It helps us make quick decisions in our daily routines without overthinking. However, this "good enough" approach can hold us back from finding better choices that might help us in the long run. For instance, if we always take the same route to work out of habit, we might miss out on a faster or more scenic option that could make our commute better.
Our natural tendency to avoid effort is a big reason why changing behavior can be so challenging. Every action we take uses some amount of physical or mental energy. The less energy an action takes, the more likely we are to do it because it doesn’t require a lot of motivation. That’s why we often spend a lot of time scrolling through social media or binge-watching shows, while we’re less likely to make time for things like regular exercise, cooking healthy meals, or learning something new. For busy people, easier options are even more appealing because they fit better into an already packed schedule.
You can think of every habit as a means to an end: it’s not the habit itself you want, but the result it brings. For example, you don’t actually want to exercise—you want to feel fit and healthy. You don’t want to meditate; you want to feel calm. The harder a habit is, the more obstacles there are between how you feel now and how you want to feel. Making it easier to do desired habits increases your chances of sticking with them. This way, you can reach your goals with less effort. On the other hand, making it harder to do unwanted habits can help you dismantle them.
Making things easier is like taking your foot off the brake in a car; once the resistance is gone, the car naturally moves forward with little effort.
We can do hard things, like sticking to a regular workout, raising kids, or learning new skills. The idea of making things easy is to reduce friction so that it's easier to do things now that will help us in the future. Ask yourself:
🤔 How can I make it as easy as possible to do things that will benefit me in the long run?
How to make behavior easier or harder
There are many strategies to help build habits by making actions easier by removing friction, and to dismantle habits by making actions harder by adding friction. Since these strategies aren’t mutually exclusive, you can combine different ones to maximize your chances of creating lasting change.
⚒️ Set up your environment for success
Make it as easy as possible to stick to good habits by setting up your space to support them, and make it harder to fall into bad habits by removing anything that encourages them.
Your environment plays a big role in shaping your behavior. Optimize the spaces where you spend the most time to support what matters to you. The closer the things you need for a habit are, the easier it is to use them, making the habit easier to stick to. This reduces friction and increases your chances of success. On the other hand, the farther away these things are, the harder it becomes to use them, making it easier to fall out of the habit.
Here are some examples of how to reduce friction and make good habits easier:
👉 Choose a gym close to home or on your way to work, so it’s easy to stop by.
👉 Keep a full water bottle on your desk or have healthy snacks like fruit nearby to make it easy to stay hydrated and eat better. This also makes them more noticeable, so you’re reminded to make healthier choices throughout the day.
👉 Get your workout clothes and shoes ready the night before to make it easier to exercise. Some people even sleep in their workout clothes to make it even more convenient.
👉 Organize your fridge so healthy foods like vegetables, yogurt, and lean proteins are easy to grab. This makes them more noticeable and accessible.
👉 Prepare all your ingredients and tools before you start cooking. This saves time and reduces stress by making everything ready to go, so you’re less likely to forget something. This is known as "mise-en-place," a French term meaning "everything in its place."
Here are some ways to increase friction and make bad habits harder to do:
👉 Remove unhealthy snacks from your house. If they’re not around, it’s easier to choose healthier options when you’re hungry.
👉 Keep the TV remote control out of reach. This makes it harder to turn on the TV since you’ll need to make more effort to get it.
👉 Move your alarm clock further away from your bed to reduce the temptation to hit the snooze button. You’ll have to get out of bed to turn it off, which can help you resist going back to sleep.
👉 Set a password for online shopping to reduce impulse buying. It gives you a moment to think about whether you really need to make the purchase.
👉 Use a separate device for managing work emails so you can maintain a healthier work-life balance. This creates a boundary and helps you focus on your personal life without work distractions.
👉 Organize your fridge so unhealthy foods aren’t easy to grab, making it more likely you’ll choose the healthier options.
👉 Ask a family member or coworker to keep your smartphone for a few hours to stop you from constantly checking it and help you focus on more important tasks.
👉 Pay with cash instead of a debit card when buying something. Paying with cash feels different—it makes you physically hand over money and see it leave your wallet, which may make you think twice before spending.
⚒️ Use the Two-Minute Rule
The Two-Minute Rule says that when starting a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.
Make beginning your habit as easy as possible by shrinking it down until it takes two minutes or less. Write a single sentence, read one page, meditate for a minute, or do just one push-up. The purpose of this is to build the habit of showing up consistently, helping you become the kind of person who practices this habit. Once you’re comfortable doing the two-minute version, you can gradually add more until you reach your full habit. Celebrating each small win along the way makes the habit feel rewarding, boosts your confidence, and helps you build momentum.
⚒️ Take charge of key moments
Every day, you face a few key choices that shape what comes next. Will you wake up early or press snooze? Choose a healthy lunch or grab fast food? Order takeout or cook at home? Head to the gym or play video games?
These decisive moments matter because each one influences your next steps and how you spend your time. By making positive, productive choices in these key moments, you can build momentum, improve your energy, and stay on track with your goals.
⚒️ Use commitment devices
A commitment device is something you set up now to limit your options in the future. It helps your future self stick to good habits and avoid bad ones by making it easier—or even inevitable —to follow through on desired behaviors. We all tend to prefer immediate rewards over long-term benefits. Commitment devices make it harder (or impossible) for your future self to give in to temptations.
For example:
👉 Leave your cash and cards at home, so you can't spend money when you're out.
👉 Put your money in a savings account that won’t allow withdrawals until a certain date.
👉 Pay for a class or event ahead of time, so you feel motivated to go since you’ve already paid. This is a positive use of the sunk cost fallacy—the idea that you’re more likely to follow through because you've already invested money.
👉 Don’t buy unhealthy snacks when shopping, so they’re not at home when you get cravings.
Even though commitment devices can be helpful for changing behavior, many people don’t like using them and think they don’t need them. They often feel sure that they can change by relying on their own self-control and willpower. Unfortunately, this overconfidence can often lead to disappointment.
⚒️ Set defaults
A very effective type of commitment device is to make one-time choices that set things up to happen automatically. This way, you don’t have to think about it anymore—the habit happens on its own. This works like a gentle nudge, helping you make positive choices without needing ongoing effort or constant decisions. It’s a smart way to use human laziness to your advantage by making the easiest option the one that benefits you most. However, this approach doesn’t work well for habits that need regular effort, like exercising, which require ongoing motivation and commitment.
Using the fresh start effect—like starting at the beginning of a new year or after a big life event—can boost your motivation to make these one-time choices.
For example:
👉 Set up automatic monthly deposits into a savings account to make saving easier.
👉 Set up automatic bill payments to ensure your bills are always paid on time.
👉 Use smaller plates to help you eat less, as we often keep eating until our plate is empty.
👉 Use email filters to organize your inbox, making it easier to find important messages and reducing clutter.
👉 Unsubscribe from unnecessary emails to save time managing your inbox.
👉 Cancel streaming services you don’t need to help you spend less time watching them.
👉 Turn off notifications on your phone to reduce distractions.
👉Set daily time limits for social media apps to help lower your screen time.
⚒️ Use mental rehearsal
You can use mental rehearsal to both break bad habits and build good ones. To dismantle a bad habit, imagine yourself in the situation where you’d usually engage in that habit, then picture yourself choosing a different response instead. For example, if you’re trying to reduce screen time, you might visualize yourself putting your phone down and focusing on something else. This practice not only prepares you for that moment but also makes it easier to act differently when the time comes.
For building good habits, practice imagining each step of the habit, including any challenges you might encounter and how you’ll overcome them. If you want to exercise regularly, picture putting on your workout clothes, completing the workout, and feeling satisfied afterward. This kind of mental rehearsal makes the habit feel more familiar, reinforces your commitment, and helps boost your confidence, making it easier to follow through in real life.
⚒️ Build the skills you need
One way to make a behavior easier is to build the skills you need to do it smoothly. When you practice and gain confidence, what once felt challenging becomes second nature. For instance, if you want to cook more meals at home, learning basic cooking techniques will make it simpler and more enjoyable. Training yourself or picking up new skills lowers the friction of performing the behavior, so you’re more likely to follow through. Plus, with each step forward, you’re reinforcing your ability to reach your goals and make lasting changes.
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Making behaviors easier or harder by reducing or adding friction is a powerful tool for building and dismantling habits. This is the third step in James Clear’s four-step habit model: cue, craving, response, and reward. Always keep your ultimate goal in mind—becoming the type of person you want to be.
References
Atomic Habits, by James Clear
How to Change, by Katy Milkman
Good Habits, Bad Habits, by Wendy Wood
Fogg Behavior Model, by Dr. BJ Fogg
