Stop Thinking About Stress and Do This Instead

There are several different types of stress. If you’re ill or have an ill family member, that’s one type of stress. However, stress is also associated with everyday life and accomplishing your goals. This latter type is what we’ll discuss here.

Let me start with a quick story time. One of my hobbies is “travel hacking,” a term mainly used to describe earning points and miles to travel for close to free. In this arena, there tends to be an inverse relationship between how easy a process is and the value you can potentially get from it.

For example, you could fly from St Louis to Hawaii with United Airlines by using United miles and book this easily via their website. However, if you’re willing to book the exact same United flights through their partner, Turkish Airlines, the miles required are only around one-third of going through United.

So, why doesn’t everyone do this? Well, the main reason is that you can’t just book it online. You need to call Turkish Airlines, and if that doesn’t work, email a bunch of their offices to get an agent who knows how to book the flights using miles to do it for you. This may or may not work, but sometimes it does.

The process isn’t particularly hard or time-consuming, but some friction is associated with it.

Part of why this deal stays around is that it’s a bit difficult to execute, so it’s not overexploited. If it were easier to accomplish and more people took advantage of it, Turkish Airlines would likely make their offer less generous and more on par with booking with United directly.

When Getting Things Done, Think About Friction Instead of Stress

How is my example relevant to you if you have no interest in points and miles or travel?

If you pay attention and observe closely, you’ll notice that this pattern often occurs in life. You can often accrue bigger rewards or get better value if you’re willing to jump through a few hoops.

However, even the smallest friction is often enough to put most people off. There’s lots of evidence from research on habits that shows this is the case. People do what’s easiest.

If you think about jumping through a few easy hoops as stressful, your nervous system will react to that. You’ll feel stressed. If you think about it as friction or a challenge instead, you won’t feel as stressed by the same task.

Here’s How to Get Better at Enduring Worthwhile Tasks That Involve Friction

• As discussed, use the label friction (or challenge) rather than stress.
• Get lots of practice doing things that are new to you.
• Mentally link enduring friction to your strengths and values. For example, persisting through friction might utilize strengths like grit, endurance, organization, or resourcefulness. It might tap values like challenge or novelty.
• Find friends willing to endure friction to get outsized rewards and share your experiences.
• Enjoy the outsized rewards you get. This reinforcement will encourage you to keep doing this for more rewards.
• Respond compassionately (to yourself and others) when you experience frustration.

Learn not to avoid:

• Asking for what you want
• Talking on the phone
• Asking more knowledgeable people about topics that are unfamiliar to you
• Activities that work some of the time but not all the time.

Perfectionism will impede your success at this.

To get good at persisting through friction, you’ll need to tolerate not being good at it initially and your efforts sometimes not working. You’ll also need to tolerate sometimes feeling like you’ve asked a stupid question or asking for help and not getting it. If you’re a perfectionist or excessively self-critical, you’ll likely find this harder than it needs to be. I’ve extensively written about this topic and offer more tips on Stress-Free Productivity.

To recap, try reframing stress as friction.

When it makes sense to do so, try reframing the stress involved in getting an unfamiliar, frustrating, or finicky task accomplished as friction instead. Notice if you experience fewer stress sensations when you do this.

This principle especially applies to accruing unusual or outsized successes.