At some point doing the hard thing becomes easier than making the hard thing easier.

And that's when you have to muster up the willpower to overcome whatever friction is left over.

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The condition for getting yourself to do something is simple: it’s just internal willpower ≥ external friction.

If that condition is false then the way you make it true is by decreasing friction and/or increasing willpower.

It’s helpful to think of this like balancing a budget: willpower is like your income and friction is like your spending.

If your budget isn’t balancing then the first thing to do is cut out any dumb costs.

Is there anything dumb about your environment that’s causing needless friction? Cut it out.

Your life is like a big codebase – if you’re struggling to implement a new behavior in some area, then refactor that area to make it easier to build on.

But at the same time, you can only take cost-cutting so far. There are always going to be some basic expenses you have to cover.

And there’s a limit to how easy you can make it to add a new feature to the codebase. You can refactor all you want but there’s always going to be some amount of complexity inherent to the new feature.

The trick is to be honest with yourself about when you start asymptoting off in your attempts to reduce environmental friction.

At some point doing the hard thing becomes easier than making the hard thing easier.

And that’s when you have to muster up the willpower to overcome whatever friction is left over.

That’s when you have to say “enough refactoring, time to lock in and implement this sucker.”

That’s when you have to change your focus from cost-cutting to producing extra income.

In any journey, you can chart an easier, more efficient course, but there’s always going to be some serious trekking involved.

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