What are microbarriers and how to manage them to achieve what you want
Miscellaneous / / August 02, 2023
It's not about ramps and convenient pedestrian crossings.
The publishing house "Alpina Publisher" published a book "Regular Tuesday». Its author Maria Dolganova, based on the findings of positive psychology, tells how to fall in love with everyday life and make them bright and memorable.
For example, in order to enjoy life and move towards your goals every day, it is important to be able to build or remove obstacles - microbarriers. How to do this is described in an excerpt from the chapter "Personal Ecosystem".
In this part […] we will talk about how to make everything that brings you joy and satisfaction as simple and accessible as possible. We will pay attention to the ergonomics of your life in order to make it easier: somewhere to reduce resistance and make less unpleasant things that you dislike, somewhere to facilitate the necessary, pleasant and useful classes.
It seems to us that microbarriers mean nothing. It doesn't matter where the sneakers are: it would be motivation for a run, and you can get sneakers from the top shelf of the closet if necessary.
It's a delusion. Microbarriers are the main evil of our everyday life. Okay, maybe not the most important, but certainly the most insidious, because we too often do not realize the extent of their influence on our actions.
Marketers have long understood that people are creatures lazy, and they are well aware that each additional step in sales funnel reduces the number of people who will go from potential customers to real ones. Each extra button or form that needs to be filled out on the site on the way from search to order confirmation reduces their number. Each extra question in the questionnaire reduces the percentage of people who fill it out to the end. Simple truth! That is why such giants of network retail as Amazon have long switched to a one-click order: if you want to sell well, you can’t make it difficult for customers to go from decision to completion actions. It needs to be shortened!
If we want to make the acquisition process easier good habits or performing useful actions, we need to think like marketers. Our task is to simplify the path for ourselves as much as possible and eliminate all possible obstacles.
Micro barriers are ubiquitous and cause negative emotions and difficulties that we sometimes do not realize.
If we assume that in order to complete a task (say, exercise at home), we need a certain volume determination, and our internal resistance is strong enough, any barrier can tip the scales not in our benefit. For example, in the case of training, an obstacle may be the need to look for a suitable video lesson - not long, not boring, not too intense, but such that there is a result. Yes, and there are no dumbbells on hand, so weight training is not good. If you don't have a ready-made solution - a workout program or a favorite vlogger that you like to work with, you may not even notice how this tiny barrier will make you wave your hand and promise yourself to come back to the question tomorrow. Of course, a similar scenario awaits you tomorrow.
As a rule, small obstacles can be easily removed. In the same home workout example, you might be hindered by not having a clean workout uniform or running shoes, which solved by buying several sets of clothes and special sports shoes for the house, in which you do not train on the street. Maybe you don't have the right place to train. It can be equipped, for example, by moving the furniture, but if this has to be done every time, your attempt to exercise regularly at home will be doomed to fail.
Microbarriers create additional friction: they must be minimized, and then the mechanism will work as it should.
Prepare enough space for your mat, keep your sneakers close, download a workout app, or find suitable videos in advance. It also helps to agree with yourself what time of the day you will train, and tie it to other events (for example, before breakfast or during the child’s daytime nap). There is no guarantee that these measures will work if you lack determination, but they can make the most difficult initial phase easier.
The same principles work in other areas as well. If you want to read more, for starters, you should choose and prepare a book and put it where you plan to read. If you're more comfortable reading on your phone, consider subscribing to an e-book service. And if you are able to absorb books in parallel with other things, then audiobooks are your option. Subscribe, add some interesting titles to your library and start listening! Bring the application to the main screen of the phone so as not to forget about it. Buy wireless headphones so you don't have to walk around the house with your phone.
A few simple steps - and now you are already regularly listening to audiobooks for household chores, on walking, in transport, and on your list there are already twenty books read in six months instead of one in a year before. And if you listen to lessons instead of an audiobook foreign language? Or professional podcasts? Between times, imperceptibly, pleasantly, you will be able to move towards your goal, and most importantly, it will become easy and become a habit. The force of friction will be eliminated.
If you have a hobby […], prepare the necessary supplies for it in advance! So that every time the mood does not disappear and the time does not end, while you are looking for everything around the apartment, pulling it out, laying it out. Everything must be ready! And wait only for you, like an orchestra that is waiting for its conductor.
If you want to relax in the evening with a good movie and spend the first half hour looking for something to watch, you get lost in the choice, and in the end it all ends with a banal series, I have the same advice for you: get ready in advance!
Have a list of movies that interest you. Create a "to watch" list for each service by doing a little research and armed with ratings and reviews. Then on Friday night you will have a ready-made solution - you just have to get comfortable in front of the screen and turn on the movie that suits your mood.
When we need to restore a resource, as a rule, this means that we no longer have the strength to search. We need a ready-made solution, a recipe that is easy to make. You need to know the address of the salon or the phone number of the master if the body asks for a massage. It's good to have a few ready. interesting places to visit in the city if you want to have fun.
And the beauty of microbarriers is that they can not only be eliminated, but also created.
Basic principle: we keep everything good at hand, everything bad we clean away. If you want to eat less sweet, just remove it from the table in the closet. During the experiment in the student canteen, the table with cookies was moved to the far corner, and the consumption of cookies decreased by 14%. Want to spend less time on your phone in the evening? Plug the charger into a socket not at the bedside table, but in the kitchen, and leave the phone there overnight. Dreaming of spending less time on social media? Turn off notifications, remove app shortcuts from the screen, remove bookmarks from the browser.
Let your imagination go. How can I make the desired action easier and more enjoyable? How to make it harder for yourself to access harmful and unwanted activities? Learn to manage micro-barriers and use our natural human laziness to your advantage.
The Normal Tuesday book will be useful for those who are stuck in a routine and live from weekend to weekend. She will teach you to appreciate everyday life, fill every day with positive emotions and not put off life for later.
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