Sometimes making life easier isn’t about building a better routine. It is about removing something that no longer needs to be there.
Most of the advice we hear about improving our lives involves adding something.
We should exercise more, eat better, read more, get up earlier, meditate, organise our week, improve our sleep, spend more time with our families, learn something new and become more productive. None of those are particularly bad suggestions, in fact, most of them probably make sense.
But I have started wondering whether there is a point where trying to improve your life simply becomes another thing you have to manage.
I have certainly fallen into that trap myself. There have been periods where I was trying to improve several things at once and genuinely believed I was being productive by doing so. I would look at what wasn’t working and immediately think about what I could add to fix it. A better routine, a better system, another project, another thing to learn. My instinct is almost always to look for the missing piece. It took me a while to consider that the missing piece might not be something I needed to add at all.
The problem wasn’t that I was short of things to do, I was already carrying plenty.
That got me thinking about something that feels quite different from the usual self-improvement conversation. Perhaps sometimes the best thing you can do isn’t to find another way to improve your life. Perhaps it is to look at what is already there and ask whether all of it still needs to be.
We Don’t Notice How Much We Add
The interesting thing about adding things to your life is that most individual additions don’t feel particularly significant.
I think this instinct has probably been reinforced by the way I’ve spent much of my working life. In a career where there was always another target, another product to understand, another presentation to prepare or another problem to solve, doing something usually felt better than doing nothing. If something wasn’t working, the natural response was to find a way to improve it. That mindset can be useful at work, but I’m not sure it always serves us particularly well when we bring it home.
Checking your work email once more probably isn’t going to cause a problem. Agreeing to one more commitment probably won’t make much difference. Signing up for another subscription, joining another group chat or taking on another small responsibility can all seem perfectly manageable.
The difficulty comes from the accumulation.
Eventually you can have a calendar that is constantly full, a phone that rarely stops demanding your attention and a head that seems to have a dozen unfinished thoughts running through it at any given time. None of those things necessarily feels like a crisis, but together they create a background sense that you are always managing something.
I think this is particularly relevant to the person who reads The Frictionless Man.
From the outside, they are probably doing reasonably well. A career, a family, responsibilities and a life that might look quite comfortable to somebody else. There isn’t necessarily one huge problem that needs fixing. Yet they can still reach the end of the day feeling like they have been mentally busy for twelve hours without being able to put their finger on exactly why.
Sometimes the problem isn’t one enormous source of friction.
It is dozens of small ones.
A message that needs answering. A conversation that keeps replaying in their head. Something they agreed to do next weekend. An email that hasn’t been dealt with. A decision they keep putting off. A notification that interrupted them five times today. Something at work that they know they should probably address but haven’t.
Individually, none of these things seems particularly important.
Together, they occupy space.
That is something I have increasingly connected with the idea of mental load. In How to Reduce Mental Load: A Simple Weekly Reset That Works, I wrote about the fact that mental load isn’t necessarily created by the amount of physical work we have to do. It can also come from everything our brain feels responsible for remembering, monitoring and resolving.
And once you start looking at life through that lens, subtraction becomes quite interesting.
We Are Usually Looking for Something to Add
I think our first instinct when something isn’t working is often to add another solution.
If we’re tired, we look for a better morning routine. If we’re stressed, we search for another technique to manage stress. If we’re disorganised, we download another app. If we don’t feel productive enough, we create another list of goals.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this. The problem is that we rarely stop to ask whether the thing causing the problem is actually a lack of something.
I’ve noticed this particularly over the last few years. Once you become aware that something could be better, it is remarkably easy to turn self-improvement into another project. I can start with something quite reasonable, such as wanting to sleep better, and before long I’m reading about routines, screens, exercise, food, supplements and everything else that apparently needs attention. At some point I have to step back and ask whether I’m actually reducing the problem or simply giving myself another list to manage.
Perhaps you’re tired because you aren’t getting enough sleep. In that case, improving your evening routine might genuinely help.
But perhaps you’re tired because your evenings are already filled with work messages, family commitments, social media and a dozen other things that leave you with no real opportunity to switch off.
Adding another wellness habit isn’t necessarily going to address that.
The same thing happens with mental load. If you have twenty unfinished things circulating in your head, another productivity system might help you organise them, but it doesn’t necessarily question whether all twenty still need your attention.
Sometimes the more useful question is:
What could I remove?
That question sounds almost too simple, but I think it deserves to be asked more often.
What Have You Stopped Questioning?
There are things that become so normal in our lives that we stop questioning whether they are still useful.
Checking email in the evening might have started because there was a genuine need to stay on top of work. Five years later, you may still be doing it even though the circumstances have changed.
You might have agreed to something because it made sense at the time, but continue doing it simply because you have always done it.
You might spend an hour scrolling through social media every night without actually enjoying it very much.
You might keep saying yes to invitations because saying no feels uncomfortable, even though you regularly find yourself wishing you hadn’t agreed.
You might spend a surprising amount of mental energy trying to keep up with people, information or expectations that don’t really contribute anything positive to your life.
None of these things necessarily looks serious enough to warrant a major life change.
That is precisely why they can be difficult to notice.
Friction is often small.
The problem is that small friction repeated every day eventually becomes part of how your life feels.
I have noticed this in my own life with things that seemed completely harmless until I stopped doing them. There is often a strange period where you realise you had been spending time or attention on something simply because it had become habitual. I explored this idea in Observer Mode: How to Step Back, Reflect, and Gain Clarity, because creating a little distance can make it easier to see whether something genuinely needs fixing or whether I’ve simply become too close to it.
You don’t necessarily notice the benefit of removing it immediately.
You just notice that something feels slightly easier.
What Could You Stop Doing?
This is probably the simplest experiment I can suggest.
Instead of asking yourself what you should improve this week, ask yourself what you could stop doing.
You don’t need to make it dramatic. In fact, I think the smaller examples are often more useful.
Could you stop checking work email after a particular time?
Could you stop answering messages immediately?
Could you stop attending a meeting where you rarely contribute anything useful?
Could you stop following accounts that leave you feeling worse about your own life?
Could you stop automatically agreeing to every request?
Could you stop mentally rehearsing a conversation that hasn’t happened?
Could you stop treating every decision as though it requires the perfect answer?
Or could you simply stop filling every spare moment with something?
That last one is harder than it sounds.
I have noticed how uncomfortable we can become with empty space. If there is ten minutes available, we reach for our phone. If an evening is unexpectedly free, we look for something to fill it. If we finish one project, we start thinking about the next.
There is always something else we could be doing …. Perhaps we don’t always need to.
Subtraction Isn’t Giving Up
I think this idea can easily be misunderstood.
Removing things from your life doesn’t mean becoming lazy or giving up on ambition. It certainly doesn’t mean that everything difficult should be avoided.
If exercise makes you feel better, keep exercising. If learning gives you energy, keep learning. If your morning routine genuinely improves your day, there is no reason to abandon it.
The point is to become a little more selective about what deserves your time and attention.
I’ve noticed it in much smaller things. I’ll have an evening where I’m already tired, but instead of simply deciding that I’ve done enough for the day, I’ll look around for something else that needs doing. Check something, tidy something, work on a project or read something that I probably don’t need to read. None of these things is particularly important, but each one gives me the feeling that I should still be doing something. Sometimes the friction isn’t coming from having too much to do, it’s coming from my inability to accept that I don’t need to do anything else.
Something can be good without being necessary.
I have had to become more comfortable with that idea myself. There are books I haven’t finished, opportunities I haven’t pursued and projects I have decided weren’t right for me, even though I could have made a reasonable argument for doing them.
There is a temptation to believe that saying no to something means you are missing an opportunity.
Sometimes it simply means you are making room for something else.
That feels particularly relevant in midlife because there is already a considerable amount competing for your attention. Work, family, finances, health, relationships and questions about what you want the next stage of your life to look like are not small things.
You don’t necessarily need to add another layer of optimisation on top of all of that.
Perhaps you need to remove something that doesn’t deserve the space it is taking.
A Simple Friction Audit
I have started to think about this almost like a small audit of your everyday life.
Rather than trying to redesign everything, look for the things that repeatedly create a little irritation.
What do you keep putting off?
What do you keep checking?
What do you keep worrying about?
What do you keep agreeing to even though you don’t really want to?
What repeatedly interrupts you?
What creates unnecessary decisions?
What leaves you feeling drained without giving much back?
Then ask yourself whether it can be removed.
If it can’t be removed, perhaps it can be reduced.
If it can’t be reduced, perhaps it can be simplified.
And if it genuinely needs to remain, at least you have made a conscious decision to keep it rather than simply allowing it to remain because it has always been there.
That distinction matters.
A frictionless life isn’t a life without responsibilities. I don’t think that would be realistic, particularly when you have a family, a career and all the ordinary responsibilities that come with being an adult.
The objective is not to eliminate everything that requires effort.
It is to become better at recognising unnecessary effort.
I’m still catching myself doing this. I don’t think I’ve suddenly become someone who can look at a busy week and calmly decide what doesn’t matter. There are still times when my instinct is to add another system, make another list or find another way of doing something better. The difference is that I’m beginning to recognise the question I should probably ask first: do I actually need to improve this, or do I simply need to stop carrying it?
Perhaps You Don’t Need Another Version of Yourself
There is something I find quite appealing about this idea because it moves away from the constant pressure to become a better version of yourself.
We are surrounded by messages telling us that we should be improving.
Better habits.
Better routines.
Better health.
Better productivity.
Better mindset.
And perhaps some of that is useful.
But I don’t think people necessarily need to become a completely different person.
Maybe they are already doing reasonably well.
Maybe they are simply carrying more than they need to.
Maybe the improvement isn’t another habit squeezed into their morning. Maybe it is one less commitment on their calendar.
Maybe it isn’t another productivity system. Maybe it is finally deciding that one particular responsibility isn’t theirs to carry.
Maybe it isn’t another mindfulness exercise. Maybe it is putting the phone down for half an hour and allowing their brain to stop processing information.
Those changes aren’t particularly impressive from the outside.
Nobody is going to congratulate you for removing an unnecessary meeting from your calendar.
Nobody knows that you stopped checking your email at 9pm.
Nobody sees that you said no to something you didn’t want to do.
But you notice …. And sometimes that is enough.
Final Thought
I don’t think the answer to a busy life is necessarily becoming better at managing the busyness.
Sometimes we need to question the busyness itself.
That is what I like about the idea of subtraction. It doesn’t ask you to become more disciplined, more productive or more ambitious. It simply asks you to look at what is already occupying your time, attention and energy and decide whether it still deserves to be there.
That doesn’t mean walking away from everything difficult.
It means becoming more deliberate.
There will always be responsibilities we cannot remove. There will always be people who need us, decisions that have to be made and things that require effort.
But there are also things we have accumulated without really noticing.
A commitment here.
A habit there.
Another notification.
Another expectation.
Another thing we think we should be doing.
And perhaps occasionally the most useful question isn’t, “What else can I do to make my life better?”
Perhaps it is:
“What can I stop doing?”
You might discover that you don’t need another system.
You might not need another routine.
You might not even need to become a better version of yourself.
You might simply need a little less to manage.
And sometimes, making life more frictionless starts there.
The Frictionless Subtraction Framework
This is the simple process I use when something in my life starts feeling unnecessarily difficult.
Notice what is creating friction.
Don’t immediately try to fix it. Pay attention to what keeps irritating, distracting or draining you.
Question whether it still adds value.
Something may have been useful once and no longer be useful now. Habits and commitments can outlive the reason they originally existed.
Remove what you can.
Don’t look for a more sophisticated way of managing something if you don’t actually need to do it.
Replace only if necessary.
This is the part I think we often get wrong. We remove something and immediately feel the need to fill the space with another activity. Sometimes the space itself is the benefit.
Notice what becomes easier.
Once you’ve removed something, pay attention to what changes. You may have gained time, reduced decisions, lowered mental load or simply created a little more breathing room.
That is the measure that matters.
Not whether your life looks more productive.
Whether it feels more manageable.
END OF BRIEFING
Continue The Journey
If reducing unnecessary friction is something you’re working on, the weekly briefing delivers one practical idea every Tuesday.
No noise.
No productivity hacks.
Just one clear way to think better, work calmer and move forward.