What does it mean that the path of least resistance?

People follow the easiest path — make the desired path the easiest.

Example: You set a goal to journal every evening. Your journal is in a drawer in your bedroom, your pen is somewhere in a kitchen junk drawer, and the couch — with the remote already in reach — is between you and both of them. Every night, you sit down after dinner and the television is on within seconds. You never consciously decide not to journal. You simply follow the path that requires the fewest steps, the least searching, the smallest activation energy. Now imagine the journal is open on the kitchen table with a pen on top, and the remote is in a drawer in the bedroom. Nothing about your desire to journal changed. Nothing about your love of television changed. What changed is which behavior the environment makes easiest. You journal now — not because you became more disciplined, but because the path of least resistance shifted.

Try this: Map the paths of least resistance in your daily routine. Pick three recurring behaviors — one you want to keep, one you want to start, and one you want to stop. For each, trace the literal sequence of steps from trigger to action. Count the physical steps, the decisions required, the friction points. Then redesign: for the behavior you want to keep, remove one step. For the behavior you want to start, make it require fewer steps than whatever you currently do instead. For the behavior you want to stop, add at least three steps between the trigger and the action. You are not changing your willpower. You are changing the gradient that your behavior flows down.