How To Build Good Work Habits By Reducing Friction And Sparking Joy

Productivity writers often talk about reducing friction in workflows — essentially, how to be more efficient.

But what about having fun with work? Building elements of fun into your work not only makes work more enjoyable in the moment. It also supports good habits needed for long-term success.

Here’s how to do it.

Photo credit: AnastasiaDudka

Reducing friction

Let’s start with friction. An excellent way to support a positive habit is to reduce drag, release any “adhesions” — as a physical trainer might put it— and otherwise smooth out the system. 

For example, if you want to capture ideas more consistently, you need a quick and simple system, requiring the least amount of effort. Cal Newport recommends a simple text file on your computer — one that is always open — where you can type in ideas at once. There’s no fiddling around to find the right app, formatting text, tagging — or other forms of drag found in many capture systems.

To reduce friction when capturing tasks, I use OmniFocus. This app is admittedly more complicated to set up and manage. But my capture system is easy to use. For ideas and observations — anything I want to reflect on, potentially write about, or otherwise build on creatively — I use a combination of Drafts and Roam Research, a system I will elaborate on later.

My process feels frictionless. But more than that, it’s fun to use. And that, I realized, is what makes these systems work. So let’s look at the positive aspect of building workflows.

Sparking joy

Organizational guru Marie Kondo’s famously advises people to tidy spaces by pondering whether each possession “sparks joy.” If it doesn’t evoke positive feelings, people should gratefully discard the object — it no longer serves its purpose. And keeping the item dilutes the pleasure we experience from other possessions we value, by cluttering our closet, for example.

In designing our workflows, why not also ask, “does this process spark joy?” If not, maybe it’s time to redesign or replace it, or discard it altogether — like that sweater you haven’t worn in ten years.

Building positive habits

In Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky says, “the design of your productivity tools will affect how eager you are to use them. Attraction often breeds commitment.”

Thinking this way also supports good habits. In Atomic Habits, James Clear writes that good habits are characteristically painful in the short-term and pleasurable only in the long-term. (Think: exercise) The opposite is true for bad habits. (Think: eating Doritos while watching YouTube on the couch). 

Thus, cementing a good habit requires us to strengthen an association between the good behavior and the long-term reward. But in the short-term — to build the habit initially — we must find ways to experience pleasure and associate it with the new behavior.

Workflows for good habits

So for our work, build in a little pleasure into what might otherwise be a drab but important task needed for long-term success. Don’t think only about reducing friction. Find ways to make the task enjoyable, if ever so slightly.

One way to do this is with technology: using Siri, Shortcuts automations, scripts on a Mac — even formulas in Excel. When we see technology magically accomplish something tangible, it’s immediately rewarding — do I dare say, possibly even fun?

Sparks can shine outside the digital world too. Take pleasure in writing with a nice pen in a quality notebook. Find running shoes you like, ones you will enjoy lacing up as they launch you onto your feet. Maybe splurge on a hardcover edition to get you reading that challenging book.

So try to build in some fun — things that may take time to set up but will create happiness — and ultimately increase productivity by supporting a positive habit.

How have you incorporated elements of joy and fun into your work?

How To Quickly Capture Ideas Into OmniFocus

Here’s my system for getting ideas into my OmniFocus task management system.

On my Mac, I use this keyboard shortcut:

To get this Quick Entry box:

I don’t have to complete all the fields. Rather, I type just enough to remember the idea, hit Return, and my task goes to the OmniFocus inbox. I can later elaborate on it, create a project and next actions, and so on. Similarly, if I want to capture supporting material along with the idea, I use the clipper shortcut:

This opens a Quick Entry box along with the highlighted text, URL, or email — the text or link is captured in the Note field. I also use this method for linking back to To-Dos in Basecamp. Very useful!

Away from my Mac, I dictate or type text into Drafts on my iPhone, then send it to OmniFocus as an action. Alternatively, I use Siri to dictate a Reminder, which gets synced with OmniFocus. I process the task when I return to my Mac.

Explaining The World In Our Own Words: A Path To Understanding

The best way to understand something is to restate it in our own words.

German sociologist Niklas Luhmann was a proponent of reading in this way. He recommended against underlining or highlighting text. He captured quotations infrequently. Instead, he tried to understand the gist of the important ideas he read and restated them on a separate piece of paper in his own words. He wrote his insights from these ideas on note cards, which went into a slip box and connected to ideas on existing note cards — a Zettelkasten system, or what Sönke Ahrens calls Smart Notes. Over his career, Luhmann formulated some 90,000 such notes, enabling him to write 70 books and hundreds of academic journal articles.

Niklas Luhmann — Credit: alvaro_bsm | Flickr

Richard Feynman, 1975, in Burnaby, Canada — Credit: S. Johnston, History of Science: A Beginner's Guide (Oxford: OneWorld 2009) | chapel cross | Flickr

Physicist Richard Feynman also advocated learning by communicating. He famously stated that he didn’t know whether he really understood something until he could give an introductory lecture on the subject. “The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

If you listen to The Daily podcast, you know that Michael Barbaro of The New York Times may be the master of this technique in the field of interviewing. His style is to ask open-ended queries, then a few follow-up or clarifying questions. After several minutes of this, he interjects a “Let me see if I got this” type expression — then restates the interviewee’s main idea in his own words. He often phrases his restatement with a narrative punch: highlighting contradictions, ironies, and surprising details. The interviewee usually confirms that Barbaro understands the idea correctly, but other times the interviewee clarifies or expands further on a point. By now, as a listener, we feel confident that Barbaro understands it — and we feel confident that we understand it too. Now this tactic might feel predictable to regular listeners, but it is not formulaic — Barbaro rephrases the idea using his language rather than repeating words.

Michael Barbaro interacting with students at Scripps College — Credit: Scripps College | Flickr

Learning in this way induces us to listen to a speaker attentively; to comprehend the text deeply. There’s no margin for tuning out or half-consciously glossing over a page. We must be engaged.

By using our own words, we integrate an idea into our existing mental models. The idea links to other ideas. The connection reflects a deep understanding rather than rote memorization. As a side benefit, though, we are more likely to recall the information because the idea is made meaningful through its connection to our existing knowledge.

Having to restate an idea checks our understanding — do we really get it? Learning is an iterative process, where we keep identifying what we don’t know and refocusing our energy on the most difficult material. If we find ourselves struggling to reformulate a restatement, we may need to ask more questions or return to the text.

Restating another’s spoken words also generates empathy. When we reiterate others’ perspectives, we step into their shoes, like an actor getting into character. We engage our mirror neurons. We feel others’ emotions as we describe their experiences in our own words. And if we can explain what others just said — in our own formulation — they will correctly perceive we’ve understood them. In turn, they may feel like sharing more, continuing a virtuous cycle of communication.

Finally, explaining the world in our own words is creative. By reformulating an idea, we move it to a new context — fastening it to our existing ideas and perspectives on the world. The new connections infuse the original idea with new meaning. We thus transform the idea into something else, forging a new idea altogether.

No One Has Been Paying Attention For A While Now: What Recent Experiences With Remote Juries Tell Us About Our Distracted World

In Court, Everett Collection

Some California courts are holding jury trials during the coronavirus pandemic. Logistics have been a difficult challenge. But the biggest problem — one far more consequential than any technical issue and more pervasive than what happens in legal proceedings — is many people’s inability to pay attention anymore.

In one case, a juror left his computer to attend to food on the stove. Another juror could be seen lying in bed. Jurors switched focus away from court proceedings to other screens, kids, pets, and whatever else was happening at home.

In other words, jurors did what everyone does during video meetings. Juror distraction is merely a special case of a general problem.

Here’s what we can do about it.

(Link to full essay, originally published by The Daily Journal, September 11, 2020)

Inspiration Is For Amateurs: On Muses, Work Ethic, And Subjectivity

Why do we wait for inspiration — a great idea, the missing insight, the theorem’s proof? Rarely do muses visit, and only then after we’ve demonstrated sustained effort and preparation, so as to welcome them through the front door. Yet the myth of the muse persists. 

Rather than wait for the muse, prolific creators focus on doing the work itself, what Maria Popova calls “supremacy of work ethic over ‘inspiration.’” 

Achilleion Palace, Corfu Island, Greece by Predrag Lukic

From Inside the Painter's Studio, painter and photographer Chuck Close says:

Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will — through work — bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great ‘art idea.' And the belief that process, in a sense, is liberating and that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today, you know what you'll do, you could be doing what you were doing yesterday, and tomorrow you are gonna do what you did today, and at least for a certain period of time you can just work. If you hang in there, you will get somewhere.

Lucas I (1986-87) by Chuck Close

L'acrobate (1930) by Pablo Picasso

In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King, counsels:

Don't wait for the muse. As I've said, he's a hardheaded guy who's not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn't the Ouija board or the spirit-world we're talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up.”

Years earlier, Pablo Picasso said: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield writes: “[T]he most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” When we sit down day after day and keep going, heaven comes to our aid. The Muse takes note of our dedication. “It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.” We experience “Resistance” as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It aims to prevent us from doing our work because success would negate our ego.

In many ways, this approach is reminiscent of Cal Newport’s broader thesis in So Good They Can’t Ignore You, that peoples’ quest for “passion” in their work leads them to make unfortunate choices. He describes the Passion Hypothesis: “The key to occupational happiness is to first figure out what you’re passionate about and then find a job that matches this passion.” He argues this is wrong: “passion” is, instead, a side effect of mastery. And mastery comes from sustained effort to develop rare and valuable skills.

Whether over a career — or during a particular work session —the prolific creator focuses on working hard, lacking expectations of pleasure and immediate satisfaction.

It’s tempting to see our longing for “inspiration” as the result of living in a decadent Western society. We feel entitled to work that is at once deep and meaningful, but also easy and fun. (Sadly, many of us heard messages like this growing up.) If the work feels challenging and discordant at the moment, we are quick to render a diagnosis: we’re doing the wrong work. Or we’re going about it the wrong way. Something — or someone — is preventing us from fulfilling our destiny. Or maybe something is wrong with me. The answer is seldom: “this is work, and work is hard.”

We’ve come to idealize the concept of “flow,” hypothesized by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, and popularized by writers thereafter. The idea is that when we’re doing the right work in the right way, it should just flow — in other words: it should feel easy. Many of us have experienced something like this, and we find ourselves chasing the dragon’s tail. But subsequent research, such as that of K. Anders Ericsson, suggests that feelings of “flow” are limited to certain domains and are not correlated with progress. So we should avoid confusing “flow” with actual productivity. 

In fact, we know from experience that subjective productivity does not necessarily yield high output. We have all before produced good work while feeling terrible, and through a painful process drawn out worthwhile ideas. There was no flow. But we did good work nonetheless.

And we never know what our work will look like in an objective light. Tomorrow, how will those words read, how will the drawing look, the riff sound? We need distance between the work and our own evaluation of it.

Our best work lies just beyond a field of pain. Are we willing to cross it today?

An 18th Century Summer Reading List

The books I’ve read recently were all written in the last ten years. Most were published in the last two years. I’m not alone in my choices. By focusing in this way, are we losing a broader context, missing foundation for deeper thoughts and understanding, especially when the ground on which we stand seems to be shifting so tumultuously?

Photo: William Silver, The Wren Building at the College of William and Mary.

True, historical books remain popular (e.g. Grant, Sapiens, Hamilton of course). But these works still filter history through a contemporary eye.

Now seems like a critical time to step back, view the big picture, and revisit ancient wisdom. If one undertook such task, what would the reading list look like?

A first edition of Herodotus' history of the Persian Wars sold by Christie’s. Edited by Aldus Manutius (c. 1452-1515). Venice: Aldus Manutius, September 1502.

The earliest known drawing of the Wren Building was made by Franz Ludwig Michel, a Swiss traveler, in 1702. It is a view of the east elevation. (Courtesy College of William & Mary)

My first thought — thinking about how Lincoln and Hamilton initially struggled to find books — was that the list would be short. The number of published books in circulation during the 18th Century was small by today’s standards.

I returned to Thomas Jefferson’s famous letter to his nephew Peter Carr. Carr was essentially a high school student at this point. Jefferson was “much mortified” to hear how little Carr had progressed in his studies. So Jefferson gives him a reading list and promises to send him various volumes.

I compiled Jefferson’s list below.

I left off the scientific and mathematic books — Jefferson recommends that Carr wait to study these subjects until university. And given the progress we’ve made in these domains, this is one area where newer books are better, unless of course one wanted to study the texts for historical purposes.

However unostentatiously Jefferson seems to suggest this as starting point for a young man’s education, these books would — today — surely comprise a rigorous undergraduate curriculum in the humanities.

And — it’s hard to conceive of doing this now — but remember that students then read the Greek and Roman texts in their original ancient languages, rather than in translation. The better mathematic and scientific texts were in French. Jefferson strongly promoted learning Spanish. So, the prerequisites themselves were daunting.

Photo: Page one of "Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787". Image from the Library of Congress, The Thomas Jefferson Papers. By this point, Carr was studying law under George Wythe at William & Mary.

As intimidating as this list seems, it’s also narrow in scope. There are no works from any non-Western cultures, where ideas also flourished and produced similarly important texts. (Add those to the list — extra credit!)

Summer isn’t over yet. So, before you pick up that latest James Patterson novel, behold Thomas Jefferson’s Reading List:

Greek History

• Goldsmith's history of Greece
• Herodotus
• Thucydides
• Xenophontis Hellenica
• Xenophontis Anabasis
• Arrian
• Quintus Curtius
• Diodorus Siculus
• Justin

Roman History

• Livy
• Sullust
• Caesar
• Cicero's epistles
• Suetonius
• Tacitus
• Gibbon

Greek and Latin poetry

• Virgil
• Terence
• Horace
• Anacreon
• Theocritus
• Homer
• Euripides
• Sophocles

“Modern” literature

• Milton's Paradise Lost
• Shakespeare
• Ossian
• Pope's work
• Swift's works

Morality

• Epictetus
• Xenophontis Memorabilia
• Plato's Socratic dialogues
• Cicero's philosophies
• Antoninus
• Seneca

Minding The Gap: Why Great Storytellers Read

Beginning artists — all who create for a living — must first recognize that their starting work is not as good as the work they admire, the mature product made by others. To heighten this perception — and to replenish the drive to improve throughout a career — writers must keep writing. And they must read.

Photo: Ivan Ives. Reader, Reading Room, Mitchell Building, State Library of New South Wales, 29.10.1943, Pix Magazine, part of the ACP Magazines Ltd. photographic archive, ON 388 / Box 006 / Item 091

Recounting his journey as a storyteller, Ira Glass says:

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. The first couple of years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. Okay? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has the ambition to be good, but it’s not that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you … You can tell that it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people, at that point, they quit.

In her book on the business of writing, Jane Friedman advises:

If you can’t perceive the gap — or if you haven’t gone through the “phase” — you probably aren’t reading enough. Writers can develop good taste and understand what quality work is by reading writers they admire and want to emulate.

In his memoir, Stephen King describes a typical day — intense writing and editing in the morning, followed by reading in the afternoon and evenings, when he hones his sense for language and character. Reading fuels his writing. He admonishes the young writer: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or tools) to write.”

For creators, the gap is persistent. The skill of the masters is elusive. The old work continues to arouse and enlighten — to enrich the new work. It cannot be attained or surpassed.

As we improve in our craft, our taste improves too. The finishing tape keeps moving, and we can never break through it. Someday, we might finally think our work is no longer “sort of crappy.” But we’ll never be satisfied either. That’s what keeps us learning.