Add Friction: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Add Friction, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Practices that may help

1. Use effort pacts
   Add friction that makes distraction harder to slip into without thinking.
   Indistractable, Made Practical
2. Name the resistance out loud
   Acknowledging push-back diffuses it; arguing with it amplifies it.
   Psychological Reactance: Working With the Push-Back Reflex
3. Remove one small obstacle at a time
   Eliminate tiny points of friction so the good behavior becomes the path of least resistance.
   Kaizen: Change by Tiny Steps
4. Add friction to attention-capture apps
   Increase the effort required to open distracting apps so the default path is not the lowest-resistance one.
   The Attention Economy: Reclaiming Your Focus from Systems Designed to Capture It
5. Increase friction on high-capture apps
   Add steps between you and the apps most likely to capture you — every additional tap reduces automatic use.
   Grayscale Phone Mode and Behavioral Design
6. Reduce friction on desired behaviors
   Make the healthy choice two fewer steps than the unhealthy one.
   Nudge Theory, Made Practical
7. Roll with resistance instead of fighting it
   When you meet a push-back, soften and reflect rather than argue.
   Motivational Interviewing, Made Practical
8. Tame the Infinity Pools
   Add friction to bottomless apps — news feeds, email, video — so they stop hijacking attention.
   Make Time, Made Practical
9. Add friction to unwanted behaviors
   Inserting even a small obstacle between you and an unwanted behavior meaningfully reduces how often it happens.
   Environment Design for Behavior Change
10. Replace commands with genuine choices
    Frame requests as options rather than obligations to neutralize the threat to freedom.
    Psychological Reactance: Working With the Push-Back Reflex

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• The escape is one tap away and so frictionless that I’m three videos deep before I even realize I caved→
• Someone’s clearly digging their heels in, and every time I argue back with why they’re wrong it only makes them push harder→
• I know exactly what I should do, but every time there’s some little hassle in the way→
• My thumb opens the app before I’ve even decided to→
• My thumb finds the same two apps and opens them before I even know I picked up the phone→

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.