smartphone filled with distractions. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can
remove the points of friction that hold us back.
This is precisely what
electronics manufacturers in Japan began to do in the 1970s.
In an article published in the
New Yorker titled “Better All the Time,”
James Suroweicki writes:
“Japanese firms emphasized what came to be known as ‘lean
production,’ relentlessly looking to remove waste of all kinds from the
production process, down to redesigning workspaces, so workers didn’t
have to waste time twisting and turning to reach their tools. The result was
that Japanese factories were more efficient
and Japanese products were
more reliable than American ones. In 1974, service calls for American-
made color televisions were five times as common as for Japanese
televisions. By 1979, it took American workers three times as long to
assemble their sets.”
I like to refer to this strategy as
addition by subtraction.
*
The Japanese
companies looked for every point of friction in the manufacturing process
and eliminated it. As they subtracted wasted effort, they added customers
and revenue. Similarly, when we remove the points of friction that sap our
time and energy, we can achieve more with less effort. (This is one reason
tidying up can feel so good: we are simultaneously
moving forward and
lightening the cognitive load our environment places on us.)
If you look at the most habit-forming products, you’ll notice that one of
the things these goods and services do best is remove little bits of friction
from your life. Meal delivery services reduce the friction of shopping for
groceries. Dating apps reduce the friction of making social introductions.
Ride-sharing services reduce the friction of getting across town. Text
messaging reduces the friction of sending a letter in the mail.
Like a Japanese television manufacturer redesigning their workspace to
reduce wasted motion, successful companies design their products to
automate, eliminate, or simplify as many steps as possible. They reduce the
number of fields on each form. They pare down the number of clicks
required to create an account. They deliver
their products with easy-to-
understand directions or ask their customers to make fewer choices.
When the first voice-activated speakers were released—products like
Google Home, Amazon Echo, and Apple HomePod—I asked a friend what
he liked about the product he had purchased. He said it was just easier to
say “Play some country music” than to pull out his phone, open the music
app, and pick a playlist. Of course, just a few years earlier, having unlimited
access to music in your pocket was a remarkably frictionless behavior
compared to driving to the store and buying a CD. Business is a never-
ending quest to deliver the same result in an easier fashion.
Similar strategies have been used effectively by governments. When the
British government wanted to increase tax collection rates,
they switched
from sending citizens to a web page where the tax form could be
downloaded to linking directly to the form. Reducing that one step in the
process increased the response rate from 19.2 percent to 23.4 percent. For a
country like the United Kingdom, those percentage points represent
millions in tax revenue.
The central idea is to create an environment where doing the right thing
is as easy as possible. Much of the battle of building better habits comes
down to finding ways to reduce the friction associated with our good habits
and increase the friction associated with our bad ones.
