What does it mean that friction engineering?

Adding friction to bad choices and removing friction from good choices changes behavior.

Example: You keep saying you want to read more in the evenings, but every night you end up scrolling your phone instead. The phone is on your nightstand, fully charged, notifications on. The book is downstairs on a shelf. The friction differential is working against you perfectly: the phone requires zero steps, the book requires leaving the room, finding it, and bringing it back. So you reverse the friction. You put a phone charging station in the kitchen — not the bedroom. You place the book on the nightstand where the phone used to be. You delete Twitter and Instagram from the phone (reinstalling requires searching the app store, signing in, and waiting). Now the bad choice requires five steps and the good choice requires zero. You did not become more disciplined. You did not summon more willpower. You rearranged the physical costs. Within a week, you are reading thirty minutes a night — not because you changed who you are, but because you changed what is easy.

Try this: Run a friction audit on one behavior you want to do more of and one behavior you want to do less of. For each, list every micro-step between the impulse and the action. Count them. Then redesign both: remove at least two steps from the desired behavior and add at least two steps to the undesired behavior. Implement the changes physically — move objects, change app layouts, rearrange your space. Track the behavior for seven days. Do not rely on willpower at any point. If you find yourself needing willpower, your friction engineering is not aggressive enough. Redesign and try again.