Friction Reduction

I just finished a product sprint with Prof G. His associate, NYU Professor Adam Alter, recommends auditing the points of friction in any product or service, as removing friction is a great way to improve the experience and retention. For example, when Neflix auto-plays the next episode, they remove friction; when Uber auto-pays at the end of the ride, they remove friction; when Amazon Go stores allow you to walk out of the store without a point of sale, they remove friction. You get the idea. (More on that subject here, if you're curious - the word was really just my jumping-off point.)

We are all in the ideas business. And if you know you're in the ideas business, then you must realize that you should be in the friction reduction business, too. I've mentioned the importance of reducing the friction between having an idea and running an experiment before; there's another point that's just as important, yes much less obvious: the friction that keeps ideas in your head. And this is a critical point of friction to reduce.

Very simply put, make it as easy as possible to write ideas down. That's why I keep post-its on my bedside table and a thin notebook in my back pocket.

As Tom Kelly says in his excellent TED Talk, our short term memory lasts only 15-30 seconds. "The vast majority of our ideas escape without ever being written into long term memory." His math of creativity I think is largely a thought experiment (though I'd be curious to know what proportion of our ideas escape without ever being logged or shared), but I can absolutely relate to the feeling of regretting "the one that got away," whether it's an idea about a slide in a talk, an email response, or a to-do.

That's why I try to be disciplined about writing ideas down the moment they come to me. It's actually a relief: reducing the friction from idea to paper keeps me from trying to remember stuff, and eliminates that feeling of regret.

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