I hadn’t written this then. I’m writing this a week later. I do remember the idea I had.
It was about how introducing friction to phone and browsing and other sins doesn’t really work.
Despite the friction, you end up doing it often enough that the muscle memory develops quickly.
There was a time when opening the browser and then Ctrl+T and f were muscle memory. Facebook it was, then.
There are times when you really want to access Google Chrome quickly and there are times when you definitely don’t want to. How do you introduce a system that ensures you get to use it easily when essential, but you need to make it much harder when obviously non-essential.
Moreover, the kind of browsing I do in Chrome, it’s like entering a gamblers’ den. Yes, there is some merit to making the entry difficult. Say that you’re motivated enough to work through the difficulty. After that, once you’re in, you’re done for.
The key here lies in realising that the friction needs to keep coming back. Every few minutes. Perhaps with an exponential decay. A part of the friction when entering is asking, how long do you want to spend. Say, 30 minutes is the answer. Then you start with the first friction point at 15 minutes, another at 22 minutes, another at 26 minutes, another at 28 minutes, then at 29, and then at 30. And after that, every 30 seconds. The time to get through that friction point itself increases. 10 seconds the first time, then 20, then 30, then 40, then 50, and then 1 min, 2 min, 4 min… Make the sin absolutely untenable.
I will not get into building this now. It was a thought.
The core idea is, friction can’t be the same everytime. Otherwise, at least I would have built muscle memory quickly enough that the friction wouldn’t matter.