Happy Friday!

Once upon a time…

…two brothers schemed to steal money from their mother.

She was a loving and doting mother, so they knew they could manipulate her. They helped her install Venmo on her iPhone—”It’ll be easy to send us money when we buy books for our courses, Mom.”

Two days later, she left her phone on the table while she walked the dog. The brothers knew her unlock PIN (the same one she used for everything), and they Venmo-ed themselves a few dollars.

Over the next two weeks, they stole a little money here, a little money there. They kept the transfers small so they wouldn’t get caught.

But as all thieves do, they started pushing the limits. They took more, they took too much. After a couple of months—and a couple of bank statements—their mother figured out they were stealing from her, and confronted them.

Handling Guilt

After their initial denials, both brothers fessed up. Their mother didn’t scream at them or kick them out of the house. Indeed, they would have preferred screaming—her calmness made their guilt even worse.

Here’s the critical part of our story, so pay close attention: The two brothers handled that guilt very differently.

The first brother carried his guilt with him everywhere. He sulked, he moped, he cringed whenever he thought about what he had done. His guilt, festering inside, turned into anger—at his brother for convincing him to hurt his mom, at his mom for being so gullible, at the world for creating such easy ways to steal from people. He became bitter and unpleasant to be around.

The second brother felt the weight of his guilt and determined to do something about it. He apologized to his mother, took full responsibility for his actions, and repaid her in installments as quickly as he could. Then he created a daily habit to journal about his virtues and his shortcomings, and resolved to become a better man.

Both brothers were to blame for their original crime. Their actions were inappropriate and indefensible. But once they were caught, one bottled up his guilt, while the other used it to fuel his improvement.

In the future, which of her sons do you think their mother preferred?

The Power of Negative Thinking

Why do we feel guilt? Or anger? Or fear, anxiety, frustration? Wouldn’t life be easier if we didn’t have to deal with those?

If we were all like Brother One, sure, it would be awful. We would bottle up our negative emotions until they rot us. That’s the primary danger: that we’ll trap negativity inside and die of emotional sepsis.

But what if we were more like Brother Two? What if we saw guilt, fear, frustration, as opportunities to improve ourselves and the world around us?

What if we took our negative reactions and converted them into positive actions?

Liabilities can be assets

Let’s explore what that means for productivity.

How often have you been working on a project only to find yourself paralyzed by frustration or anxiety? You can’t figure out what needs to be done next, and your frustration gets bottled up inside and begins to affect everything you’re trying to work on.

I’ve had days where the mere thought of going to my computer to work gives me a pang of anxiety, days where I simply won’t go to my home office because—you know—if I don’t go there, the work doesn’t exist, right? …right??

I’ve had ideas slip through the cracks and projects not come to fruition because I can’t get things captured or processed correctly. All I get out of it is anxiety—and, ironically, that anxiety makes it less likely that I’ll capture my ideas or process my projects properly.

These negative reactions are liabilities. They weigh us down. They paralyze us. But they can be assets too, if we know how to harness them.

Our frustration, our anger, our anxiety—all of these shine a big bright light on where our problems are. And if you solve those problems, the sky’s the limit.

💡 Upgrade: Turn friction into action 💡

☝️ That’s your weekend upgrade.

What is friction?

In productivity terms, I define friction as any resistance—however large or small—that makes it harder for you to get your work done.

Friction can appear in the work itself—your projects and tasks. One common example involves a “next action” that remains undone for weeks. Eventually you might realize that it relies on two or three prerequisite tasks that you haven’t defined. The lack of clarity was the friction that stopped your progress on that project.

Or friction can exist in the metawork—your processes and workflows. A common example is GTD-style Weekly Reviews that unwittingly turn into Quarterly Triage. Maybe the Weekly Review has too many steps, or too much to review, and that “too-many-too-much” friction causes you to skip it—resulting in a far worse situation down the road.

Friction has many faces

The problem with friction is that it doesn’t present itself as friction. Instead, we feel frustration, or anxiety, or fear, or anger—and like the brothers in our story above, we first have to decide how we’re going to deal with that.

Here’s the critical mindset shift: When you find yourself taking a productivity failure personally, reframe that as friction within your system.

• You’re not undisciplined. There’s friction in your system.
• You’re not stupid. There’s friction in your system.
• You’re not a lost cause. There’s friction in your system.

This way, when you get stuck and your frustration or anxiety grows, you can remind yourself to look for the friction rather than focusing on the way it makes you feel.

Is this lying to yourself? Or avoiding responsibility? Unequivocally and adamantly: NO.

Remember the two brothers. Negative emotions that don’t convert to action are toxic. Getting pissed at ourselves does nothing to solve our problems—indeed, it gets in the way.

But recalibrating your mindset to identify, isolate, and remove friction is actionable. Like the second brother, you can do something about the way you feel. And that is all the difference in the world.

How can Tools for Thought help?

If you’re new to the Weekend Upgrade newsletter, I explore how processes can be created in Tools for Thought (TfTs). TfTs are apps optimized for linking your ideas, thoughts, notes, etc.—apps like Roam Research, Amplenote, Logseq, Obsidian, and Craft.

Two simple TfT practices can help you turn friction into action: Journaling and a Friction-Removal Project.

Use journaling to identify friction

In my first Weekend Upgrade newsletter, I described journaling as a tool for saying what you mean to say and doing what you mean to do. Journaling is an amazing tool for identifying friction, too. Here’s how it works.

Let’s imagine you’re hard at work on a project and suddenly find yourself stuck, unable to move forward. You’re facing a deadline—this work has to get done, and now. Your frustration builds, your anxiety peaks.

Then you remember what your old pal R.J. said: this doesn’t mean you’re stupid. It means there’s friction in your system.

So in your TfT of choice—maybe on the Daily Notes (or equivalent) page—you reference your [[project]] and start writing about why you’re stuck. You ask yourself questions like Is this task unclear?, Am I working in the correct contexts—where, when, with what tools?, Are there any prerequisite tasks I’m skipping?, and so forth.

This is metawork, but remember: metawork is real work. You’re not taking a break from your work—you’re approaching it from a level above to help you get unstuck.

Once you identify the friction, it’s time to fix it. If the friction is tied to the immediate project you’re working on, create the clear, actionable tasks you need to eliminate the friction and move forward.

But what if the friction is related to the way you work in general, or to a problem with your workflow? Where do you put the tasks to fix those problems?

Make a project for friction removal

An ongoing project for removing friction allows you to capture workflow-level problems and create actionable tasks for solving them.

At the most basic level, a friction-removal project solves the “Where do I put this?” problem. You have a project ready-made to house the tasks to remove friction, so you won’t hesitate.

Beyond that, a dedicated project is the perfect place to create reminders to scan your system for friction on a regular basis. It’s all too easy to become friction blind. We become accustomed to it—even if it’s legitimately hindering us—merely because we encounter it regularly. A regular reminder to search for friction will overcome that blindness.

One other benefit of a friction-removal project is keeping us focused on our work. If you’re like me, you have a tendency to get sidetracked by tinkering with your system. And I think it’s a safe bet that you are a tinkerer—I mean, you’re subscribed to a newsletter called Weekend Upgrade to improve your productivity and communication. If that doesn’t scream “tinkerer,” what does?

When we have a dedicated friction-removal project, we won’t get derailed by constant tinkering. Because when we encounter friction, rather than immediately working on it, we have a place to capture it so we can address it later. Without that easy capture process, it’s likely we’ll spend the rest of our day on the friction rather than the work.

What do I do next?

1. Take 2 minutes and answer this question: What’s one thing I learned in this newsletter that I can put into practice right away?

By committing to a specific action, you make it much more likely you’ll do it.

2. Over the weekend, create an ongoing project for removing friction from your workflows in your TfT of choice.

Seed it with a task to examine your workflows for friction. That way you can start discovering the friction you’ve become blind to.

If this was valuable for you:

Share the newsletter with someone you think would also get value from it! https://rjn.st/weekend-upgrade-newsletters​

Until next time, friends:

Don’t be Brother One. Be Brother Two. When you’re feeling guilty, or frustrated, or anxious, or afraid, do some journaling about it. Identify the friction, and then send that friction packing!

R.J.

​rjn.st/links​

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P.S. Cohort Four of my flagship AP Productivity course is available for Early Bird registration. If you use Roam Research or Obsidian and you’d like to create productivity workflows tailormade for you, follow the link and check it out!

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P.P.S. I don’t want to appear flippant about overcoming anxiety. Clinical anxiety will require more than eliminating friction. There is synergy between what I do—coaching—and the work that therapists do, but there are plenty of differences, too. If you’re dealing with paralyzing anxiety and converting it into action is a pipe dream, therapy may be the right first step.