The Art of Frictionless Living.

In the last few years, there has been a move away from struggle and difficulty in everyday life and a move towards easy choices and instant gratification.  That is not a criticism, merely an observation.  And it is also the way history and technology have always worked.  As life progresses, we are able to overcome more obstacles either by using systems or technology or both together.

In agrarian times, if you wanted food, you grew it, milked it, churned it or raised it.  This was before electricity and appliances and required a high amount of ingenuity and fore thought.  If you had no refrigerator, you had to find other ways to preserve food so that you could use it for the whole year.  Even lighting the stove required splitting wood and starting a fire hours before a meal to get it ready.  This was the way life was and people accepted it while trying to improve it.

With the advent of electricity and refrigerators, preserving food became much less important.  Turning on the stove was a much easier process as well.  Eventually, this became a normal occurrence and very few of us can imagine not opening up the fridge to get something to eat.  It has become that easy.

A Few Clicks to Everything

The technology boom of the last 20 or so years has accelerated this trend in an amazing way.  If we want food, we can pull out our phone and order it with a few clicks.  These apps have become so efficient, that we rarely have to enter our payment information after you have done it once.  The food then comes right to our door, no need to leave the house.

Food delivery is just the start and not a new concept, as we have been able to order delivery to our homes for the last many decades, even if we had to phone the restaurant.  At this point virtually anything can be delivered to your home through an app.  And, if you need to go somewhere, you can even order a car to pick you up and drop you off.  Again, with a few simple clicks on our phones.

Frictionless

So, what is the secret of all of this technology and why is it so popular?  Simply, because it is frictionless.  There are no barriers in place for us to get what we want, at a moments notice, very often within the hour.  The most successful companies have perfected the art of frictionless service and are thriving.  The opposite is also the case.  Companies that do not adapt to the times and make doing business with them difficult are falling on hard times.  Again, this has always been the case in history and the accelerated pace of technology has just made the process happen more quickly.

If the most successful companies in the world are making it easier for us to buy from them, perhaps we can make it easier on ourselves to live day to day.  We can craft our lives and choices to be frictionless as well.  If we do this, we can use the extra effort we are saving towards our goals and dreams.  We can work on the things that really matter to us, whether it is our work, personal life or a project we have been putting off until “someday”. 

So, frictionless living is going through life making our choices easier to fulfill and removing barriers to activities.  The question is, how do we remove obstacles and make daily living easier?

We can start the night before.  If we plan on waking up early, going to bed at a decent time will make that easier.  Also, avoiding technology for the last 2 hours before bed will also be very beneficial.  Numerous studies have shown that screens right before bed can disrupt our sleep and make us wake up tired.  Even with a blue light filter on, which removes much of the light that disrupts our sleep, it is much better not to have your phone or computer on before sleep.

We should also be avoiding food and drinks before bed.  Unless it is a soothing drink like hot milk, which has been known to help sleep, consuming nothing before bed is advisable.  The last 2 hours before bed should be a time to wind down and relax your body and your mind so that you are ready for sleep.  You can read a book or listen to music to begin to relax.  Books that are relatively easy to read like light fiction or comedy are best.  Horror and deep non-fiction are best read at a time when your brain can better absorb the material and think about it in detail.

By preparing for bed in this manner, we have made it frictionless for us to fall asleep at a decent time, have a good night’s rest and wake up when we planned.  Like many things, this wind down routine and getting good sleep are skills that need to be learned and may take a few attempts to perfect.  Waking in the morning is the same, but this routine once repeated a few times, will make a world of difference in your mornings.

Speaking of mornings, once you have determined what time you want to wake up in the morning, you need to know how much sleep you require in hours, then work backwards to determine your sleep time.  If you want to wake up at 6am, and you require 8 hours of sleep, you need to be in bed by 10pm.  You need to also begin winding down by 8pm.

No Tech or Food

All of this sounds very complicated, but it is actually simple once you make some rules.  If your bedtime is 10pm, no technology or food after 8 and have a book or music ready.  Simple, frictionless!

Also, if you drink coffee in the morning, prepare the coffeemaker the night before that way in the morning you only have to push a button.  Less morning obstacles.

Use an Alarm Clock

To prepare for the morning, the first step is to have your technology in another room, not in your bedroom.  You certainly do not want to use your phone as an alarm clock in the morning.  Notifications you receive during the night will disrupt your sleep as will the light from the screen.  Spend a little bit and purchase a regular alarm clock.  It can be a clock radio if you want to be fancy.  You may also wish to put it across the room where you can’t hit the snooze button.  When it goes off in the morning, you have to get out of bed to turn it off and VOILA, you are out of bed and awake.  Frictionless, restful sleep and waking up. 

Again, this process will take some fine tuning and first few times you do it, you may feel tired, but your body will get used to it fairly quickly.

A good rest is just one example and there are innumerable ways to make your daily life frictionless that would fill pages of books.  Things like preparing lunches and bags for work and school the night before rather then rushing to do it in the morning.  Or, laying out your clothes the night before.  Or always keeping the keys in the same place so that they are never misplaced. 

Once you begin to create a frictionless life, you will see more opportunities to remove obstacles daily and make things easier.