Activation Energy - Mental Model

Why we fail to accomplish New Year's resolutions.

I was always afraid of speaking to big groups of people, but when I got promoted to manager it became a necessity. Teams needed updates, and there was no way to avoid it. The activation energy needed to kick this off was huge because I wasn’t confident that I could lead these meetings. I did my best to minimise the energy required to start by planning in detail, rehearsing, and focusing on high-quality content. It worked.

Activation energy is a concept drawn from chemistry, where a certain amount of energy is needed to start a reaction.

It helps us understand why it's so difficult to start something, and why people fail their New Year's resolutions. In this article, we'll take a closer look at what it is, and how to overcome it.

For example, when you strike a match, the friction generates heat, providing enough activation energy for the chemicals on the match head to ignite.

Start & Maintain

There are two ways of thinking about activation energy:

• Energy to start a reaction

• Energy to maintain it

For example, it’s easy to decide to start going to the gym, but much harder to follow through and go even once. Maintaining the habit requires even more energy, so minimising that effort is essential.

To address activation energy, we can:

• Understand what lowers or increases the energy required to start

• Determine the resources needed to make a change sustainable with minimal effort

I was trained in the ADKAR change-management framework (more on the framework). The final letter, 'R', in ADKAR stands for Reinforcement — without consistent effort, the change may not last.

This works because our brains naturally look for the least energy-consuming ways — we are wired to save energy.

In Practice – Onboarding

Onboarding is a great example of the activation energy. It's a costly process, so we need to use the lowest possible activation energy, to get new people up to speed.

Activation energy can be decreased if we rely on:

• Checklists & automation

• Mentors

• Continuous improvement

Make sure that each onboarded person can fix what wasn't working, so the next new employee won't fall into the same traps.

In Practice – Processes

Without consistent effort, our resolutions gradually fade away, much like unmaintained processes.

Each process we try to implement should be examined taking into consideration how much effort we'll need to maintain it in the future.

It's not only about calculating the energy required to start it but also what needs to be done to maintain it over time.

About Inertia

Inertia defines that when something moves, it keeps its direction.

Inertia keeps things moving, if not disturbed by friction or any external force, things will keep moving, that's Newton's First Law of Motion: It's a tendency to resist changes in a state of motion.

I wrote about inertia:

Inertia - Mental Model

Activation energy is a complementary mental model that emphasises the need for a significant initial effort to start a reaction, along with strategies to ensure the process is sustainable over time.

Summary

Many fail to keep resolutions because they underestimate the effort required to sustain them.

I wish you all the activation energy you need to achieve your goals in life and work

Thanks for reading,

— Michał

P.S. My interest in mental models has been growing over the years thanks to Farnam Street. Their podcast, The Knowledge Project, and their books. FS also covered Activation Energy going much deeper into the chemical details of it.

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Post Notes

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