The activation energy threshold of activities
The activation energy threshold of an activity is how much you have to desire or be pushed to do that activity before you do it. You do an activity when the desire to do the thing exceeds the activation energy threshold - the desire overpowers any of the barriers. I've been making a conscious effort to lower the activation energy threshold for the activities that I want to do more of. I'm lowering the amount of time/energy it takes to engage in these activities so that no amount of time or inclination is ever too little to just do a bit.
My Problem
For things I don't want to do, the activation energy threshold is usually quite high, and I don't particularly mind that. With essays that I don't want to write for school, the fact that it is due the next day will usually give the action of writing it the necessary energy to achieve activation. The only way to lower the activation energy threshold for this activity is to convince myself that I'd be happier if I split it up over a week instead of a single night, but if I don't accomplish that mental gymnastics, so be it.
But then there are activities that I want to do, for which the activation energy threshold can also be high.
I want to write - it makes me a better thinker, and I like having a log of the things I've thought about over the years. But when I think of something I want to write down, I have two options.
- Write it in a note on my phone. This is good in that I've written the thing, but bad in that I won't be able to easily find it again in the future, and it's not part of a string of other thoughts so I can't see where it came from.
- Sit down, create a Google Doc or open one I already have where this piece of writing would fit, and write out the idea, where it came from, and how it relates to other ideas. The problem with this one is that it takes time and is not conducive to just getting the thought down.
My problem is, I always prefer Option 2. Option 2 being so thorough means I'm really happy I did it when looking back in the future, but also means that it actually gets done way less. The activation energy threshold is too high - it better be a really good thought I want to write down if I'm going to take the time to fully execute Option 2. So I often end up doing nothing at all. The activation energy threshold is too high.
This applies to a lot of things I want to do more of.
- I don't want to send cold emails related to the job search if I don't have time to send at least 7, because getting my setup all ready so I can draft and send quickly takes a few minutes. This means there have been plenty of times where I've sent 0 instead of 3 or 4, because I didn't want to sit down to do it if I wouldn't get 7ish.
- I want to read more books, so I say I'll do it for 5 minutes before bed because my books are in my room, but then I'll have a few days where I stay up late working and head back to my room and just crash, so then I forget what was happening in the book, and have to spend those 5 minutes reorienting myself, and when that happens multiple times I get tired of reading the same 10 pages of the book to be reminded of what was happening, or I forget what was happening before that, and I give up on reading altogether.
- I frequently have ideas for things to code that I don't act on. Even if I have an LLM write the code, It's a hassle to sit down, get a new project setup, decide to use Cursor or Replit or what, decide how I want to deploy, etc.
- I want to finish the things I start coding, but if I have just a few minutes, I won't work on those, because I know it'll take me a few minutes just to remember where I was at and understand what I've already done.
The result is that there are things that I want to do, am capable of doing, and have the time to do, but don't do, because the activation energy threshold is simply too high for it to be reached more than once every few weeks, when my desire to do the thing overpowers any of the barriers.
My Solution
I've been taking deliberate steps to make it stupidly easy to make progress on the things I want to do. Instead of rearranging my schedule to try to make more time for these activities (fool's errand - I'll always want more time to work on the things I care about), I've been making/learning tools and building workflows, such that when I have an impulse to do one of these activities, I can just sit down and do it.
- For sending my cold emails for the job search, I made a simple webpage where I can put in the person's information and it uses the Hunter API to find their email and gives me the info to put in my notes where I track the emails I've sent.
- For writing, I switched from using Google Docs for notetaking and personal writing to Obsidian, and set up keybindings so when I have something I want to write about, I can hit a few keys and be presented with a blank doc where I can quickly write the thought, tag it with the relevant topics, and link it to other relevant writing.
- For blogging, I set up my blog with Bear Blog which uses Markdown for posts, so I can just copy and paste from Obsidian into Bear Blog and hit "post".
- For reading, I got Google Play Books on my phone so I can read a page or two at a time in the bathroom or before bed, without having to turn on a light.
- (I haven't cracked this for coding yet. In the States, I used Warp as my terminal, and had a custom workflow where I could type one command and it would set up my project and corresponding Github repository. I have yet to set up the same thing here in China, so that's time I have to invest to lower the activation energy threshold, and I will sometime.)
With all of these, I'm lowering the amount of time/energy it takes to start the activity so that no amount of time or inclination is ever too little to just do a bit. That's another philosophy that's come from this: a teensy bit of progress is infinitely better than none.
Lowering the overhead cost of these activities, through building tools or processes through which I engage in them, is also work. But I find that I enjoy thinking about what future me would want the process to look like to make it as easy as possible, and I can fantasize about, say, being able to bring a project to life via code in a moment, and that makes it easier to do the upfront work.
One last note: it's not about productivity. I don't want to be able to do everything, no matter where I am, and do it quickly - I think then I would feel unproductive if I were just hanging out. I don't want to be able to code with my voice, nor blog from an elevator. That's why I don't have Obsidian on my phone - I don't just want to write down every thought that comes into my head. But if I'm near my computer and have had an idea percolating all day, I don't want to be uninclined to write it down because it's a hassle.