Hey there Reader,
At the beginning of the year, I had a habit that I just could not shake.
Despite having a designated office space upstairs, with a perfectly good desk area, drawers full of stationery and aesthetically arranged bookshelves, I would invariably find myself draped in a half-reclining twist on the couch, positioned so that Winston could lie in my lap, where I would work for the next eight hours or so unless I had a client or student to meet online.
This habit annoyed me so much that I brainstormed about it in the Atomic Habits workbook we did earlier this year in The Good Life Book Club, identifying the triggers and the sequence that led to it.
And there’s no denying the habit was wrecking me.
I had a shoulder injury earlier this year that developed into frozen shoulder, and this position was making it a bajillion times worse.
And then, suddenly, something happened that put an abrupt and permanent end to my habit, improving my posture, pain levels, and productivity.
Did I identify some limiting belief I had about working in my office?
Did I finally understand the emotional payoff I was getting from working on the couch?
Did I create a new habit stack, redesign my morning routine or uncover some deep-seated need for freedom and flexibility?
No.
I was offered an office chair.
And I accepted.
Turns out the real reason I wasn’t using my office had very little to do with Winston’s comfort, my sense of freedom when working on the couch or some mysterious psychological resistance to sitting at a desk.
It was that the desk chair I'd been using was really uncomfortable.
I’d misappropriated it from the dining room, where it was perfectly adequate for eating dinner but considerably less successful as somewhere to park yourself for eight hours.
After an hour or so, I would get pins and needles in my butt.
So, I kept avoiding it.
And yet somehow, despite all my analysis of the habit, I had failed to recognise the most obvious thing.
I didn’t need to change my habits.
I needed a better chair.
🪞 Something to consider
We are very good at turning practical problems into personal ones.
We assume we need more discipline, better habits, more motivation, a stronger morning routine, a different mindset.
And sometimes, of course, we do.
But sometimes the problem is much more ordinary.
The chair is uncomfortable. The lighting is bad. The thing you need is stored in the wrong place. The room is too cold.
The environment is creating friction, but we bypass it and move straight into self-analysis.
So before you decide that you need to become more disciplined, more organised or more motivated, it might be worth looking for friction.
✨Try this
Think of one thing you keep avoiding, putting off or failing to do consistently.
Before you make another plan, look at the physical conditions around it.
Is something
- uncomfortable?
- inconvenient?
- hard to access?
- badly placed?
- missing altogether?
Is there one small change you could make that would make the behaviour easier?
💭A final thought
We spend a lot of time trying to remove friction from our habits.
Sometimes we should remove it from our lives instead.
Before you work on yourself, check the chair.