Make your life harder

In most engineering disciplines, friction is not your friend. Friction is the standard-bearer of entropy; you expend useful energy and it degrades into useless heat. The same holds true beyond engineering too. Much thought is put into reducing friction in digital experiences, like document submission portals and store check-outs, to make our lives easier. And that’s a problem.

I know, it’s counterintuitive to say that our lives should be harder. The soaring technological developments over the last two centuries have improved our collective well-being tremendously. But have we at any point taken the time to ask ourselves which of the technologies we engage with improve our lives and which don’t?

Nowadays, companies spend millions (billions?) on persuasive design technologies that aim to keep you in the app for as long as possible. It’s not a conspiracy – it’s their public business model. The more time you spend in their app, the more ads you see, the more money the company makes. The incentives are not to maximise your well-being, but rather the time you spend in-app, so they use every legal means to keep you there.

It used to be possible to reach the end of a social media feed

Algorithms are designed to micro-target your preferences. Personal triggers and reinforcement schedules are used to create habits, and disappearing content makes you feel like you’re missing out. All these design features blend neatly with the seamless experience of instant feedback and obstacle-free scrolling. Did you know that it used to be possible to reach the end of a social media feed? Then they realised that this made you stop and reflect on whether it’s something you should be doing.

When so many try to profit from you by removing friction, adding your own friction is a good thing. In my life, I try not to rely on some myth of willpower, but try to create systems that make it harder to pursue compulsive, harmful habits. I recently realised that doomscrolling for 30 minutes after waking up and 30 minutes before bed eats up one hour every day. Crazy! I could have spent that time studying (or more likely, in the Beestenmarkt). I deleted the apps so I only have access through clunky browser interfaces, and I instated daily limits. I created friction.

Of course, reducing friction can be good if you want to start a good habit. I switched my gym membership to one that is 500 metres away from my house: the fewer the obstacles, the higher the chances I will go even when I don’t feel like it. Not having to bike up the Kruithuisbrug when it’s raining helps too.

Key to all this is reflection. First, I try to evaluate my habits regularly: which actually help me have the kind of life I want to live and which don’t? Then, I work towards new habits by making it as easy as possible to do the good and not do the bad. In a world that wants to make my life easier, I choose to make it harder. What about you?