5 Ways Successful Women Reduce Friction in Their Life

Be The Engineer of Your Life.

From now on, I want you to think of yourself as the engineer of your life. You are absolutely are in control of more things than you realize and you can design a life that flows. A life that seems to easily produce the outcomes you’ve been dreaming about. One of the keys to creating a more stress-free life that will allow you to create what you want is to reduce unwanted friction wherever you find it. I want you to think of Friction in scientific terms first. Essentially, whenever one material moves against another, some energy will be lost to friction.

Think about when you brush your dog, or go down a slide at a playground, or ground your coffee beans in a grinder. As two materials move against each other, energy is lost. That energy becomes heat which will cause deformation, and wear – which will reduce the life of the material’s that are in contact with each other. There are things you can do to reduce friction in these instances, use detangling conditioner for your dog so the brush glides through, add water flowing down the slide so you slip down easily, or sharpen the blades on the grinder so they process beans easier.  The exact same thing will happen to you when you find the areas that are causing pain and friction in your daily life and routines and then take the steps to reduce that friction, little by little, until you discover that you have built a life that makes success easy and overall life become immensely enjoyable.

This is going to be one of those episodes that will make you want to jump into action.  If you are like me, I know you are ready to fix those pesky areas in your life that are causing unnecessary friction.  I am going to give you some steps you can take to reduce the friction and smooth out the path to a life and career you love! 

The struggle is real…  trust me, I’ve been there! You push and push and you work your butt off, but some days, even some weeks and months, you seem to get absolutely nowhere.  Sometimes you feel like you are even beginning to slip backwards. I know, there are a few things that you really can’t control. There are times when people in your own family, including in your own home, derail your plans in unexpected ways – and yes, so often unintentional.  

I know you have a work ethic that is unstoppable and you do find ways to power through most of the asteroids that life hurls your way. Your life does not have to be a constant barrage of unexpected events and struggles you must overcome.  If you are ready to take your game to a new level, it is time to think about ways you can smooth out your processes (for you and your family) so that you can avoid all the obstacles coming at you like you are Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, you know the scene… 

https://youtu.be/voQD3_FPb2w?si=tj-DVq1nbTX1peVJ

Let’s start with the idea of process improvement first.  Many of you probably hear about this concept, including Lean Six Sigma, at work from time to time.  Depending on your company, some organizations take this concept to a nearly religious level.  Why?  It is all about reducing friction and waste, and when a company does that – they produce their product faster, with higher predictable quality, while reducing stress on current employees.  I am sure many of you apply these principles every day at work, you may have even received extensive training in process improvement.  Still, many people do not apply these ideas with their family or home.  They just don’t think about it.  Maybe you think you just want to relax when you get home but what if, starting this weekend, you decided to “improve a process” in your own home or life?

Let’s start with some of the obvious things you think about when you think about processes in your home. (And, if you have never even thought of a process in your home like this…  then this episode is REALLY going to change your life, ha ha…) Let me give you an example of a “process”. Everyone in my house has a morning routine. I will talk about that more in a few minutes, but this includes the kids – and yes – they had a morning routing even when they were very small. It was good for me, because it helped them get ready to head out of the door, and it was good for them because kids feel safe and secure when they have a routine they are following, it makes them feel like they know what is going on. So… now my two sons are 10 and 14. Every now and then, one of them will say, “I can’t find my favorite socks, I can’t find my running shirt.”  They might even say, “Did you wash clothes, mom?” I always have one question and they can hear it coming a mile away….  Did you put your clothes in the laundry basket?  Their response is always the same…  blank look, eye roll, turn around to go look in their room… NOPE!  Too bad…  I tell them, “I did laundry last night, I washed all the clothes in the laundry basket.” If the shirt and socks they wanted were not in the basket, it did not get washed.  It all goes back to their morning routine, it is simple:

• Take dirty clothes to laundry
• Clean up yard (we have dogs)
• Eat Breakfast
• Feed Dogs
• Brush teeth and get ready for school

This is just one example of a “process” we have in our house. You have a laundry process too.  Even if it is not as defined as mine. There comes a point when you want clean laundry and you do things to make sure you have clean clothes the next day. Some people take their clothes to a laundry service, some have a housekeeper, some do a little laundry every day, some wait for weeks until they literally have nothing to wear and then take eight loads of laundry to the laundromat and spend an entire Saturday washing clothes so they can start it all over.  No matter what your way is, it is a process.  Obviously, some people’s processes have more room for improvement than others.  It is all about what you are willing to live with. Either way, this is an example of how you can find space in your life and day. 

I am going to talk about five different overarching ways to reduce friction in your life. Every one of you wants something different and has a different expectation of your life, so you will have to get creative as you listen to this episode. I want you to think about the ways you could start to reduce friction in your own life as I share my thought and experiences in this episode. 

1. The first overarching way to reduce friction in your life is to develop routines for various parts of your life. Here are a few ideas of routines I have implemented:

• Morning (from wake up to start work). The kids have their own version.
  • Start work
  • End work
  • Arriving at home after work until dinner
  • Night routine (preparing for next day and bed)
  • Others:  Laundry, paying bills, cleaning house, yard work, this podcast

2. Automating some areas of my life has become essential as I have become more senior in my career, which has driven the need to optimize my time. 

• Bill paying, groceries, lawn service
• Get creative with things you can automate

3. Eliminate things not aligned with your vision for your life.

• excessive TV
• toxic people or people on a different path
• projects or paths you are pursuing because someone else thinks you “should” (parents, friends, colleagues)

4. Simplify

• Declutter – desk, countertops, garage, drawers.  Find a place for everything. This will make cleaning easier. In order to do this, you will may have to purge things you do not need or never actually use.  Go ahead and do this – your future self will thank you.
• Reorganize to enhance daily flow.  (ex. Kitchen, coffee area, bathroom, laundry area, garage)
• Say no
• Decide what your 3 most important priorities are and stop doing anything not related to those. (ex. family, career, travel or family, church, career or career, exercise, hobby)
• Design a very simple weekly dinner menu, one the kids can help with. 
• Work on only one or two goals at a time.

5. Making your desired actions EASY – some good books that will help with this are tiny habits by BJ Fogg and Atomic Habits by James Clear.

If you want to STOP any behaviors or “bad” habits, try this:

1. Think about what your trigger or prompt is that sets your “bad” habit into motion.  

2. Remove that trigger or prompt from your life. (Example, do not buy food you don’t want to eat, remove that food from the house.)

If you want to START new behaviors of “good” habits try this:

1. Decide something “good” you want more of in your life.  (Example: exercise or healthy eating). 

2. Break it down to the very initial action required to do the habit.  (Example: putting on running shoes, buying good food at the grocery store, or maybe beginning to chop vegetables for the meal prep session on a Sunday afternoon.)

3. Make a goal to chop up one cucumber.  That’s it. (I recommend putting this on the calendar.)  When you get your reminder – chop that one cucumber. Worst case, you have one healthy snack for tomorrow – a bag of slices that will replace a bag of chips.  Best case, and most likely – once you start you will complete your whole meal prepping plan for 4-5 days.  It all started by making a very easy, doable plan.

I just touched on the basics in this episode, but you get the picture.  There are so many things you can do to take charge of your own life, create days that are easier on the whole family and set you all up for success. It will be a change at first, but the more you do this and start to look at the things that make life operate smoothly like a well-oiled machine, the more time you will have and the greater chance that you will start to not only feel successful, but you may even find that success will start to just come your way.  It’s amazing what happens when you focus on what you want and set up the life around you that practically makes it inevitable. 

Your life doesn't have to be a constant barrage of unexpected struggles to overcome. Ready to take your game to a new level? Here are 5 ways to smooth life processes so you can avoid obstacles coming at you like you're Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, you know the scene…  

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