The Friction Factor

A person has wanted to cancel a subscription for three months.

It costs only ₹799, so the pain is not dramatic. Cancellation requires opening a website, remembering a password, finding settings, clicking through two screens and answering why they are leaving.

They postpone it again.

Elsewhere, a ₹2,000 purchase happens in twelve seconds because the card is saved and the address is already filled.

We like to think behaviour follows preference. Often it follows friction.

Small barriers can have large effects

Choice architecture research studies how the environment in which choices are presented changes behaviour. A large 2022 meta-analysis covering 455 effect sizes from 214 publications and more than 2.1 million participants found a statistically significant overall effect of choice architecture interventions, with an average effect in the small-to-medium range.

The important practical idea is simple: behaviour is not determined by motivation alone.

Steps, delays, forms, defaults, effort, complexity and uncertainty all matter.

Friction is everywhere

A medicine kept in a visible place is easier to remember than one in a cupboard.

An employee feedback form with 40 fields gets fewer completions than one with six.

A customer asked to create an account before checkout may abandon the cart.

A retirement investor with a complicated dashboard may avoid reviewing the portfolio entirely.

A person who keeps walking shoes near the door has removed one tiny barrier to exercise.

We often call these differences discipline. Sometimes they are design.

India offers a giant friction experiment

The scale of UPI is a reminder of what happens when transaction friction collapses. Government data reported more than 24,161 crore UPI transactions in FY2025–26 worth about ₹314 lakh crore, with UPI accounting for roughly 85% of India's digital payments that year.

That growth is not only about financial technology. It changes the lived experience of paying.

No cash counting. No change. No card machine. No bank details for many transfers. Scan, tap, done.

When paying becomes easier, the behavioural threshold for small transactions changes too.

Convenience is not neutral. It is architecture.

Use friction deliberately

If you want more of a behaviour, reduce friction.

Keep the fruit visible and the sweets inconvenient.

Put the reading material on the desk before morning.

Create automatic savings.

Make the desired action the easiest next step.

If you want less of a behaviour, add useful friction.

Remove saved cards from shopping sites.

Use a 24-hour rule for discretionary purchases above a threshold.

Move distracting apps off the home screen.

Require a second approval for certain business spends.

Good friction creates a pause between impulse and action.

Questions worth sitting with

• Which behaviour in your life is difficult mainly because the first step contains unnecessary friction?
• Which unwanted behaviour has become too easy?
• What one small environmental change could make the better action more likely without relying on willpower?

Leave points

• Behaviour follows architecture as well as intention.
• Tiny steps and delays can materially change completion rates.
• Reducing friction is powerful, but it can encourage impulsive behaviour as well as useful behaviour.
• Add friction where a pause protects you; remove friction where effort blocks a valued action.
• Before blaming motivation, inspect the environment.