My youngest daughter went through a phase of asking why about everything. Relentlessly. Exhaustingly. Why are we leaving now? Why do I have to wear shoes? Why is the sky blue? Why do we have to eat dinner?
It was maddening in the moment. But she was onto something.
Most adults stop asking why long before they should. We're handed a goal — by an employer, a culture, a version of ourselves from five years ago — and we get to work figuring out the how. We optimise our systems, manage our time, track our habits. We become very efficient at pursuing things we've never interrogated.
And then we wonder why we're exhausted and still feel like we're going nowhere.
"Most productivity problems aren't time management problems. They're clarity problems. When you know exactly why you're doing something, the how gets considerably easier."
Why your why removes friction
Low Friction Living is about designing your life so the right things happen more easily. One of the most underrated ways to do this isn't a system or a tool — it's a clear answer to a simple question: why does this actually matter to me?
Clarity about purpose reduces friction in two specific ways.
First, it makes decisions easier. When you know what you're ultimately working toward, you have a filter. Does this opportunity move me closer or further? Does this commitment serve the thing that actually matters? Without a clear why, every decision is made in a vacuum — which is cognitively expensive and inconsistent.
Second, it makes starting easier. Activation energy — the effort required to begin a task — drops significantly when the purpose is clear and genuinely meaningful. We procrastinate most on things we're pursuing for foggy or borrowed reasons. We start most readily on things we actually care about.
The three kinds of why — and why only one actually works
The inherited why
Goals that came from someone else — a parent's expectations, a cultural script, a profession you entered before you knew yourself well enough to choose it deliberately. Inherited whys can sustain effort for years, but they tend to generate a particular kind of exhaustion: the sense of working hard toward something that never quite feels like yours. Burnout often lives here.
The approval why
Goals driven primarily by what others will think — the promotion that proves something, the achievement that justifies the sacrifice, the life that looks right from the outside. Approval whys are motivating in the short term but deeply unstable. They require constant external validation to sustain, and they tend to collapse the moment the approval stops arriving — or the moment you get it and discover it doesn't feel the way you thought it would.
The intrinsic why
Goals rooted in something genuine — a value, a contribution you want to make, a kind of life you actually want to live. Intrinsic whys don't require external validation to sustain. They generate their own momentum. They survive difficult patches because the purpose is visible even when the progress isn't. This is the only kind of why that reduces friction reliably over time.
Not sure what you're actually working toward?
The Low Friction Audit is a free guide to help you notice where you're spending effort — and whether it's pointed at something that's genuinely yours.
Finding your actual why
The most useful way to surface a genuine why is through a simple layered questioning process. It feels almost childishly straightforward — which is probably why most adults never do it.
The five-layer why
A low-friction clarity exerciseOnce you have it, use it as a filter
A genuine why is not motivational wallpaper. It is a decision-making tool.
When a new opportunity arrives: does this move me toward the thing I'm actually working toward, or away from it? When you're procrastinating: is it because this task doesn't actually serve the why — or because the path is hard but the destination is still right? When you're exhausted: is this the productive tiredness of meaningful work, or the draining tiredness of effort pointed in the wrong direction?
Clarity doesn't make the work easier in the sense of requiring less effort. It makes it easier in the sense that matters more: you know why you're doing it. And that knowledge, on the days when nothing is working and the path is unclear, is what keeps you oriented.
Without it, you're just busy.
