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Erin, welcome to unlearning work, where we empower you to redesign your job by rethinking work habits, behaviors and strategies. I'm your host. Erin Merideth, a work behavior enthusiast and leadership strategist, join me as I explore various work related topics and provide practical insights and real life examples. We'll examine the nature of work from the ground up and deliver bite size episodes with actionable advice twice a month.
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Hello. Today we're talking about sludge friction and the secret power of making work harder on purpose. If you've ever tried to cancel a subscription and found yourself trapped in a maze of Are you sure pop ups and buried links you've met sludge. Sludge is a behavioral design that makes things harder on purpose. It's friction with a strategy, and it shows up everywhere your gym membership, your streaming platform, even how long it takes to unsubscribe from an email list. Companies use sludge to protect their goals, but what if we could use friction to protect ours? In this episode, we're going to flip the script. We'll explore how sludge works as a behavioral tactic in business, how you can use positive friction to manage your workload, focus and reputation at work, and how the way you show up, your pace, your responsiveness, your boundaries, teaches everyone around you what to expect from you, because every time you give 110%
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you're not just doing the work. You're training people to expect 100 to 10% again and again. So let's talk about how friction helps you unlearn that pattern.
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What is sludge really well, let's start with the psychology behind it, because once you see sludge, you can't unsee it. So the term sludge was coined by Nobel laureate Richard Thaler, the same mind who gave us the idea of nudging. So a nudge is a gentle push that makes good behavior easier, like automatically enrolling you in your company, 401, K or pre checking the Donate $1 to charity box a sludge is the opposite, a subtle obstacle that makes an unwanted behavior harder, like having to call customer service to cancel that same gym membership. It's behavioral economics in action. Other examples are airlines burying refund options under five layers of menus, because each extra click reduces the number of people who will follow through. Insurance companies require you to print, sign and fax a form instead of clicking Cancel. Even productivity apps add sludge. Are you sure you want to delete this task to make you hesitate before reducing your engagement metrics?
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So the reflection here is it's not always evil. Sometimes sludge simply nudges behavior in a direction that benefits the system. But here's where it gets fascinating when we use the same principle in our work lives intentionally, friction becomes a boundary, not a burden.
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Flipping the strategy from sludge to friction. We can't stop companies from using sludge, but we can borrow the strategy so most modern workplaces run on speed, instant replies back to back meetings, one click, everything. So the unspoken badge of honor is, the faster I respond, the more valuable I am. But here's the catch, when everything is frictionless, everything feels urgent, because behavioral science tells us low friction equals high impulse, and high friction equals high intention. So when there's no pause between request and response, your brain has no time to filter to ask. Is this even mine to do? That's where friction helps, adding small moments of resistance, a pause, a checklist, a boundary, brings intention back into your choices. Think of friction as your personal Are you sure button? I learned this lesson the hard way when my own work habit started training everyone around me to expect the impossible.
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When I was consulting early in my career, I was proud of how responsive I was. If a client emailed, I replied within minutes. If someone needed help, I was there day, night, weekends. I told myself it was about excellence, but what I was really doing was training people every time I over delivered, every time I said yes, without pausing, I reinforced the pattern. Erin always says yes, Erin always fixes it. Erin is always available. That becomes a story people told about me, and I had written it myself. Eventually, the cost was obvious. My pace wasn't sustainable. My brain was constantly in reactive mode, so I began experimenting with intentional friction by turning off notifications, building a pause rule, where 15 minutes before I reply to a non urgent message, asking myself one simple question before committing like, Why me? Why now? Why this?
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At first, it felt wrong. I worried people would think I didn't care. But something unexpected.
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Happened, people adjusted. They started respecting the new rhythm I created. That's when I realized we train people through how we show up and when we change the rhythm, they learn a new one.
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Once I realized I trained people to expect instant access and endless effort, I knew I had to redesign my system, not just my schedule, because what we often call burnout is really the result of too little friction. So we're going to look at three kinds of friction that help you work smarter, slower and more sustainable. The first being before the work even begins. Decision. Friction is the pause between the request and the response. It's the micro boundary that stops your automatic yes from hijacking your priorities. Most of us have been rewarded our whole careers for responsiveness. The faster we answer, the more competent we look. But here's the behavioral truth, fast decisions feel productive, yet they often reinforce patterns that drain us. So decision friction is about reclaiming your agency. So try this. When someone asked you for your time, resist the reflex to respond right away. Instead say, Let me think on that and get back to you tomorrow. That sentence does two things. It gives you space to evaluate whether the request aligns with your goals, it gives them a subtle clue that your attention is valuable, not instantly available.
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The science behind this is on temporal discounting, which shows that the longer the delay between impulse and action, the more rational and value aligned the decision becomes. So you're literally giving your brain time to re engage the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for long term thinking instead of emotional reaction. An example I have is I once coached a senior manager who said yes to every cross functional project her day was an endless carousel of quick favors. So we created a decision friction checklist. So there's three questions. The first is, is this part of my core role or a helper role? Second, what happens if I say no or not now? And third, who else could grow from taking this on instead of me?
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Within three weeks, she noticed her peers started coming to her with more thought out requests because she retrained them to expect discernment, not Immediate compliance. The behavioral insight here is decision. Friction teaches others that your yes carries weight. It makes people think twice before assuming your time is free.
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The second type is during the work. It's called process friction. So once you've decided what's worth your attention in the first one, this friction helps you stay with it. So process friction is about reducing the frictionless chaos of modern work, the constant pings, pop ups and context switching that fragment your focus. We often underestimate how much energy these micro interruptions cost every time you switch from writing a report to checking, Slack your brain pays a reorientation tax. It can take up to 23 minutes to regain full focus after even a small distraction. So process friction is about building in resistance to distraction.
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There's three types of tactics. The first physical friction so you move your phone out of reach when it's in another room. You dramatically reduce the number of times your hand reaches for it unconsciously. There's visual friction, so you keep only one browser tab open. Each visible, visible tab is a mental to do. So quietly, whispering that you're behind the third is systemic friction. This is batch similar tasks like emails or meetings into specific blocks. When you set predefined communication windows, you make interruptions costly for yourself and others. For example, at one of the manufacturing sites I worked with the GM used to answer every text instantly from vendors, supervisors and HR. It made him look accessible, but it also made him look reactive. So we added process friction by introducing response zones 10am and 3pm only at first people panicked. Then something amazing happened. They started solving problems themselves, so that friction didn't slow the plant down. It accelerated autonomy and the behavioral insight here is process. Friction transforms urgency culture. It says My focus is not a public resource. And just like sludge, protects a company's bottom line, this kind of friction protects your cognitive economy.
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The third type is after the work. It's called closure friction. It's the friction that helps you stop working, because for many of us, that's the hardest part this closure friction is the boundary between effort and recovery. It's the small ritual that have signals to your brain. We're done for now
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without closure, friction, our work days just bleed into our evenings. We leave 17 tabs open.
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Half a slap conversation hanging and our brains keep looping through unfinished thoughts long after the laptop's closed. That's what psychologists call cognitive residue, mental leftovers that keep your mind tethered to work even when your body's home.
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So try these tactics instead. The first the five minute shutdown ritual at the end of each day. Take five minutes to reflect, what did I compete complete what's still open, what matters most tomorrow, and write it down physically.
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Another tactic is the visibility rule. Move your laptop out of sight. Don't let your brain see work queues after hours. And the final one is the delay principle, wait 30 minutes after you wake up before checking messages give your brain a chance to re enter work intentionally, not reactively.
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An example I have is I had a client who described feeling like her day never ended. We created a ritual where she dimmed her office light and turned on a small lamp at home, the same one every night, that lamp became her cue that work was over. Within two weeks, her sleep improved and her sense of closure deepened.
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The behavioral insight here is closure, friction builds psychology, psychological safety for your nervous system. It helps your brain transition from output mode to rest mode. It's not inefficiency, it's maintenance.
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When you pull all these frictions together, it becomes communication, this before, during and after work. It's a behavioral signal. This friction you've added. It's not just managing tasks. You're communicating your values. You're saying, I'm thoughtful about my commitments. I work deeply, not constantly. I have rhythms, not random reactions. People will notice. They'll adjust. They'll start treating your attention as something that must be earned, not assumed.
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The big takeaway from today is we're always teaching people how to work with us. Every Yes, without pause, says, I'll take it all on every 10pm email says I'm available anytime every last minute rescue says, Don't worry, I'll fix it. That becomes your personal brand, not because you said it, but because you modeled it. And by using friction, you're not just managing tasks. You're managing the narrative of what's expected from you. Friction tells a new story. I value quality over immediacy. I protect my energy to sustain my contribution. I operate intentionally, not reactively. When that becomes your consistent rhythm, people adapt your boundaries become part of your reputation, and that's when you'll gain real influence.
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So what can we learn from sludge companies use it to slow us down to serve their goals, but we can reclaim that same science to serve ours. Friction isn't punishment. It's protection. It's how you reclaim authority over your time, energy and brand. Try this simple experiment this week. Pick one place to add friction. Maybe you remove slack from your phone, maybe you introduce a 24 hour pause before committing. Or maybe you start closing your laptop and lighting a candle when the day ends, a symbolic line between giving and recovering. And as you do, notice how others respond, because when you show up differently, they learn differently. Thanks for listening to unlearning work. If this episode helped you see the power of friction in a new light, share it with a colleague who's always on the go
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and remember every choice you make at work teaches others how to treat your time friction is not failure, it's leadership. You
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good
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you.
