Activation Energy

Ah! This concept finally came together in my mind!

It all started one bright summer day. I was walking through a housing area and saw the shoulder-height fences around the houses. I thought: “What’s with those fences? They would never stop me if I wanted to actually rob the place.”

Then I realized what the fences are for. They aren’t there to stop burglars. They’re there to stop people’s compulsive behavior – like teenagers spraying their signatures on the houses. If the teenagers see those fences, they’ll go “Ah, whatever, let’s go do something else.” They decided to spray something on a whim – and they will lose interest just as easily.

What is activation energy

In chemistry, activation energy is the energy you need to start a reaction. For example, paper doesn’t just spontaneously combust in thin air, because you need to heat it up to a certain point before it bursts into flames.

But once it starts burning, the reaction will sustain itself, because each burning molecule releases enough energy to push all the surrounding molecules over the edge, and get them burning as well.

So I stole this concept, and applied it to productivity.

I like to think of activation energy as the following picture:

You want to roll the rock down the hill. Once you get it rolling, you’ll be fine. But you first need to overcome the small hump. The rock represents an action you want to do (like writing a paper). The hump represents the activation energy – how much effort it takes to get you started. Also notice that once you get going, it’s easier to keep going than to stop.

Activation energy for bad habits

Let’s say you have a bad habit you’d rather not do. For example, I sometimes waste time on reddit (a social news site). Yet if I had to drive into town and go into an internet cafe just to check reddit, I definitely wouldn’t bother. It’s all about the activation energy.

A friend of mine came up with a brilliant way to use this to cut down on his facebook usage. He simply removed facebook from his bookmarks… so now to visit facebook, he needs to type out the URL. It sounds like a trivial change, but it raised the activation energy enough for him to noticeably cut down on his facebook usage.

So if you have a bad habit you would like to stop doing, try raising the activation energy. It works wonders for compulsive behavior!

But that isn’t the most awesome part of tweaking activation energy.

Activation energy for good habits

Leo Babauta has a great recipe to get himself running. He says he simply focuses on putting on his running shoes and stepping out the front door. The rest takes care of itself.

That’s an awesome application of activation energy. How much effort would it take you to get out of the house and run for 20 minutes? Now, how much effort would it take you to put on your running shoes and just step out of the front door?

In my case, the second scenario definitely takes a lot less mental effort. But wait! Look at the diagram for activation energy. Once you overcome the initial hump, the rock will get rolling without any effort on your part! So once you’re standing outside with your running shoes on, it takes almost no effort whatsoever to go to the park and start running.

In the same way, you can lower your activation energy for any other positive action. Instead of focusing on writing a paper, sit down with the goals of writing 500 words. Instead of trying to eat healthy from now until eternity, set yourself a goal of eating healthy for 14 days straight. Or choose any other positive action, and figure out how to lower the activation energy.

Here’s how you can apply this immediately:

Cheers!