What A Lovely Day!

How I knocked out stress by eliminating friction, while going through some of the most stressful times in my life.

Medium just released this beautiful new functionality called “Letters” and here I am, writing sweet nothings to you; you beautiful subscribers of my publication, “Coffee Time.”

It has been a while since I wrote something truly substantial, something I’m exceptionally proud of, but I haven’t been thinking any less.

I’ve been contemplating many many things, things that make my life easier, things that make my life full of happiness, things that give me lovely days.

My life has been wild recently, starting a company, getting engaged, getting a new puppy, all sorts of first world problems that aren’t really problems, only new friction in an otherwise blissful life.

These friction points have helped me, as much as they’ve frustrated me.

When you reach a breaking point, you really start to ponder everything.

This was the impetus of a ton of recent changes I’ve made, little updates that helped take the friction out of my life, make things run more smoothly, and add a bit of consistent relief to my life.

I think these kinds of changes can help you as well, so here’s what I did.

First: you have to realize what kind of friction is acting on your life. In my opinion, there are two kinds: very large but non-consistent, and very small but very consistent.

Second: you’re usually going to notice the very big, non-consistent stuff the most: getting married, getting a new dog, planning a massive trip, things of that nature.

These things are very foreboding because they are titanic in comparison to the usual stresses in your every-day life. They seem so vast that your mind is trying to tackle it all at once, instead of breaking it down into multiple steps. This is what you have to do to reduce the friction of large things.

For example, the dog. I had four main problems with the puppy:

1. Biting my shoes
2. Pooping and peeing in the house
3. Eating our other dogs food after he eats his own, and them fighting over it
4. Energy levels were insane at the worst possible times

So for each of these friction points I broke down the solution into a manageable, batch-able routine and process:

1. Keep shoes in a closet, always, never leave the closet open. Simple.
2. Only feed the dog in the morning and at night, in his crate (locked so our other dog can eat his in peace) take him out 1–2 hours later — never feed them when we aren’t going to be able to take them out 1–2 hours later.
3. Made a routine about taking him to the dog park to run.

The outcome is this large, insane stress has now become completely manageable and routine. It’s no longer daunting.

Third: even though your large stresses will be the most commonly thought about problems in your life, it’s typically your small friction points that actually do you the most harm. These are actually easily adjusted, and since they are so consistent they can take a disproportionate amount of stress out of your life, quickly.

For example, I had a ton of small but common friction points that I didn’t think about until I sat down and made a list, here it is:

1. My wallet is old, huge, the leather is fading and it was bulging and staining my pants when I’d wear lighter slacks or dress pants, was uncomfortable to use and slightly annoying.
2. My SOMA carafe, while I love it and its design, is probably one of the most common things I use throughout the day because I consume a ton of water, and I have to refill it constantly. I have to refill it in the sink, so anytime the sink is full my frustration is not only taken out on the carafe, but on the sink being full, and the frustration compounds.
3. I love drinking coffee, but hate having to brew it, I never have cold-brew, which is my favorite, and the coffee is always so bitter that I have to use a ton of fattening sugars and creams. For this reason I usually drank Yerba Mate, but I love coffee, which is not Mate, not by a long-shot.
4. I was feeling physically diminished, and not at the peak I recently hit and fell from in the stress of starting a new business. This caused a ton of other underlying problems such as self esteem issues, and things of that nature.
5. I was bombarded by decisions throughout the day, and actually had decision overload, so I needed to relieve decisions somehow, and also get more value out of things that I have, or else get rid of them.

So, with my list of common, smaller frictions I laid out a plan to automate efficiency in these areas, through a common and batched routine:

1. I needed a simple, easy to use wallet. I never use cash, I hate carrying it, so I chose to get a minimalist card wallet. I ended up buying this one from TGT and absolutely love it. A wallet might seem like a very small thing, but I use it every day, I carry it everywhere, and it is one of the most personal products I own aside from my iPhone (nope, I don’t have an Apple Watch, it would probably only add friction currently).
2. Since I always had to refill the SOMA carafe, I basically just needed a larger volume, hopefully with all the same benefits. Well luckily SOMA just recently came out with their “SOMA pitcher” which I bought and absolutely love. This truly changed a lot, now I only have to fill this up once a day instead of 2–5 times a day. It’s a game changer for me as far as stress level. Again, it’s something that is consistently adding friction, so spending that $40 quickly took that consistent excess friction away forever.
3. I bought a very simple, very straight-forward cold brew kit on Amazon that can brew 2–3 cups of cold brew coffee at a time, with about an 8 hour delay. I then bought an airtight pitcher that can sustain a larger amount of coffee and keep it from spoiling for a lot longer than sitting in the normal brewer in the fridge. These two together made it to where I can have 1–2 cups of cold brew a day and never run out, it’s also exceptionally easy to make more cold brew coffee with the simple brewer I bought (specifically stayed away from the complicated multi-filter options).
4. I hadn’t played basketball consistently in a very long time. I also hadn’t been doing a lot of consistent weight workouts that I had been doing in the previous couple of years when I was at my physical peak that I wanted to get back to. I bought a membership at the LA Fitness directly across from my house and every Monday and Wednesday (sometimes more) I go right after I get done working, first pushing out an hour or so long weight workout (chest, triceps, shoulders, or back, and biceps compound exercises) purposely dodging leg workouts because directly afterwords I play basketball for 2–3 hours until I’m completely exhausted. This has completely changed my moods, my energy levels during my workday, and my physical condition.
5. I set 1–3 options for breakfast, for coffee and or beverage, and for work for the day — whether I go to the office or work from home. I also set up 2–3 critical tasks and one overall focus for the day on the night prior to focus on that day. I immediately get started right when my focus kicks in in the morning, I digress for a bit, then come back to it when my focus kicks back in. I limited distractions by turning off all incoming notifications on my iPhone except for text messages, calls, and Slack messages from my team. I also bagged up half my clothes (easily over $4000 worth of clothes) and gave them to Goodwill. This one may seem odd, but really relinquishing myself from so many clothes that I simply did not wear made my decisions for what I should wear far easier. You can take it a step further and only wear one set of clothes like Zuckerberg or Obama if you want, but I like my variety, so no thanks to that.

The result? Today I’m less stressed than I can really remember, and when stresses pop up I can handle it. Sure, friction may come back into my life and pile up again, but it just takes a good break down like this to tear it right back out.

I’ve always liked the saying “Whenever you’re on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect” (I think Mark Twain said that) — but in this case I recommend whenever you’re stressed to the point of maxing out, it’s time you pause and reflect.

What friction can you take out, limit, batch, and control?

What small consistent things make your life a living hell every day?

How much would it really cost to diminish them?

What would that do for your quality of life?

I write this too because, for the longest time, I’ve wanted to run a proper email list — speaking directly to an audience that has connected with what I choose to share — but I hate using MailChimp and other programs (that are actually fantastic) simply because I don’t like sending blanket emails to people.

For this reason I like writing articles and sharing them.

For this reason I haven’t built an email list.

Now I have one, but one that I know loves what I’ve written on Medium, and for that I can simply write how I normally would, to a group of people who align with my common beliefs, and I can somehow provide value through that … medium.

Medium relieved a ton of friction in my life with this “Letters” update, so for that, I thank them.

I would also compel you to see how much friction you can relieve in your life, while also providing value to others in the process.

– Sean