We’re still talking about Clear’s 3rd Law: Make It Easy. In this chapter, we dive into a sub-law called The Law of Least Effort. The path of least resistance is a popular route.
Habits are obstacles
I thought this an interesting idea. We want to be in shape. We want to be healthy and fit. We don’t want to get up at 5 am to run. We don’t want to eat rabbit food.
The habit isn’t what we’re after. It’s a means to an end.
So if the habit is too much, it gets skipped. The easier the habit, the more likely you are to do it.
Yeah, obvious. But what have you done to make your hard habits easier?
Wasting effort
Environmental design might be the best tool for forming or breaking habits. Yes, we’re back to the rider and the elephant mentioned in chapter 3 and chapter 6.
If you’re not familiar with the notion, here’s the quick version. You can fight your desires or you can change your environment so that good habits are easy and bad habits are hard. In other words, it’s hard to eat Oreos when you don’t have any.
Key takeaways and implementation
If you’re craving a snack, there’s a chance you’ll grab whatever is easiest – good or bad. So make good choices the easiest choices.
To implement this, you have to identify where you’re struggling and look at the flow of events that leads to that obstacle. From there, look for decisions or tasks that can be simplified. Better yet, find ways to remove them. Make your decisions when you have willpower and design a system that makes it easy to adhere to it when willpower is low.
