Make it Easy

Some advice on how to get more done

I’ve been writing a summary of each chapter of Crime and Punishment as I read it.

The first one I wrote took very little effort. It had been a few days since I read the chapter I was writing about. I just wrote down whatever I remembered from the chapter. I’m sure there’s some important stuff missing from that summary. But I wrote the summary and that’s what counts.

As I wrote summaries of the subsequent chapters, I made sure to include a lot more detail than my first post. I also didn’t allow for too much time to pass between reading the chapter and writing the summary. I wanted to capture all the events that happened in the chapter. I wanted to do a good job on the summary. I had raised my standards for this series of posts.

As I began to read the next chapter of the book, I thought to myself, “I don’t feel like writing the in-depth summary for this one.” So I put the book down and decided to pick it back up when I was in the mood to write the summary.

The summary was getting in the way of reading the book. I wanted the summary to be good. This meant that I would have to take (somewhat) detailed notes while reading the chapter. That added an extra level of effort that discouraged me from reading it.

So I decided to do what I did with my summary of The Alchemist. I made it easy.

Instead of writing a bunch of paragraphs for a detailed summary, I wrote some bullet points. I got down the main events of the chapter and didn’t go into any real detail.

I read the chapter and wrote the summary. I did this because I made it easy.

The easier you make something, the more likely you are to do it.

If you keep a book in each room of your house, you will spend more time reading. This is because you won’t have to get up and walk to another room to pick up a book.

The opposite of this rule is also true. The harder you make something, the less likely you are to do it.

If you want to eat less of a specific snack, put it in a hard-to-reach place. Maybe a top shelf that you need a step stool to reach. Since there’s more effort involved in retrieving that snack, you will eat less of it.

TLDR: If you want to be more likely to do something, make it easy.

If you liked this post, check out my substack for more.