The 20-Second Rule: Meaning, Examples, and How to Use It

You probably know the feeling. You planned that today would be the day you started working out. But first, you have to go home, pack your bag, eat something, and then head out again. By the time you get home, it all feels too much. Staying there is easier, and often, that is exactly what happens. The 20-second rule aims to reverse this.

Let’s look at what the 20-second rule is, why it works, how you can use it to build good habits and break bad ones, and a few examples of what it looks like in practice.

Key points

The 20-second rule works by making good habits easier to start and bad habits harder to access.
Friction matters because every extra step, decision, or piece of preparation makes a behavior feel harder to begin.
To use the rule, look at what happens before a behavior and remove friction from the habits you want while adding it to the ones you want to avoid.

What is the 20-second rule?

The 20-second rule is a habit technique where you make good habits easier to start and bad habits harder to start. The idea is to reduce the friction between you and the behaviors you want, while adding more friction to the ones you want to avoid.

For good habits, this might mean preparing in advance, removing unnecessary steps, or changing your environment so you can get started with less effort. For bad habits, you do the opposite by making them less convenient or adding an extra step before you can begin.

Think about going to the gym after work. If you have to go home, find your clothes, pack your bag, eat, and then leave again, there are plenty of chances to decide that staying home would be easier. But if your bag is already packed and waiting for you, going to the gym becomes the easier option.

Where does the 20-second rule come from?

The 20-second rule was introduced by Shawn Achor in his book The Happiness Advantage. Achor argued that we often rely too heavily on willpower to change our behavior. The problem is that when the better option requires more effort, it becomes much easier to fall back on whatever is already convenient.

The 20-second rule helps reduce that reliance on willpower. By making good behaviors easier to start, there are fewer steps where you have to push yourself forward. And by making bad habits harder and less accessible, you create more chances to stop before acting on them.

Does it have to be exactly 20 seconds?

The 20-second rule doesn’t have to be taken literally. You don’t need to increase or decrease the time it takes to start by exactly 20 seconds, nor does a habit have to take less than 20 seconds to begin.

The point is to remove as much friction as possible from the behaviors you want to do, whether you make them five seconds or ten minutes easier, while adding as much friction as possible to the ones you want to avoid.

In some cases, the difference will only be a few seconds. In others, it might be several minutes. How much friction you can add or remove depends entirely on the behavior itself.

Why the 20-second rule works

Every behavior comes with some kind of reward, but it also requires effort. The more effort a behavior feels like it takes, the more rewarding it needs to feel for us to keep choosing it.

Friction is a big part of that effort. Every extra step, decision, or piece of preparation makes a behavior feel slightly harder. The more friction there is before you can begin, the easier it becomes to delay the behavior or choose something simpler instead.

That’s why the 20-second rule can work in both directions. By removing friction from good habits and adding it to bad ones, you change the balance between the effort a behavior requires and the reward it gives you.

Less friction makes good habits easier to start

Starting is often the hardest part of a good habit. Sitting down to work feels difficult until you are already doing it. Going to the gym feels difficult until you are in the middle of your workout.

It’s often the stages before the habit that create the most friction. That’s where you can talk yourself out of it, delay getting started, or decide that doing something easier would be better.

By making those stages shorter and easier, you reduce a lot of that friction. The overall task feels smaller, there are fewer chances to talk yourself out of it, and the habit becomes easier to start.

It’s often the stages before a habit that create the most friction

More friction makes bad habits easier to avoid

Bad habits are often easy to access, which is a big part of why they are so hard to avoid. Social media is always within reach, which makes scrolling easy. Snacks in the house make snacking easy. There is often very little friction between the urge and the behavior.

That means the effort-to-reward ratio is heavily in the bad habit’s favor. The reward is immediate, the effort is low, and there is barely any time to reconsider what you’re doing.

Adding friction changes that balance. The more steps you place between yourself and the behavior, the less immediately attractive it becomes. Even a small increase in effort can give you enough time to reconsider whether you actually want to do it.

The 20-second rule infographic showing how removing friction makes good habits easier to start and adding friction makes bad habits easier to avoid.

How to use the 20-second rule

The 20-second rule is fairly simple and only requires four steps. The more often you use it, the easier it becomes to notice where friction is helping or hurting your habits.

Here’s how to use the 20-second rule to change your habits.

1. Choose one behavior you want to change

First, choose one behavior you want to change. Maybe it’s a new habit you’d like to build, one you want to become more consistent with, or a bad habit you’d like to avoid.

For the rule to be most effective, start with one behavior. Once you’ve used the 20-second rule for a while and the process feels more natural, you can begin applying it to another.

2. Look at what happens before the behavior

Once you’ve chosen the behavior, look at what happens before it. What do you normally do leading up to the behavior? Which steps are actually necessary? Which create the most friction? And which could be removed or done in advance?

You can use a modified habit scorecard for this. Write down the steps as they happen leading up to the behavior, but instead of scoring them, make a short note about where the friction comes from and what could be changed.

3. Remove or add friction

Once you know what happens before the behavior, it’s time to change the amount of friction around it. For good habits, remove as much friction as you reasonably can. For bad habits, add more steps and make them less convenient.

The more friction you remove from good habits, the easier they become to start. Similarly, the more friction you add to bad habits, the easier they become to avoid.

4. Set it up before you need it

Finally, make the change before you actually need it. If you wait until the moment you are supposed to act, you have not really removed the friction.

Pack the gym bag the night before. Prepare your desk before you need to study. Remove distracting apps before you find yourself mindlessly opening them.

The goal is to make preparation part of your environment. Over time, you begin to notice friction earlier and adjust it before it gets in the way.

20-second rule examples for building good habits

The 20-second rule is effective for building good habits, but it can feel a little conceptual without some real examples. Here are three ways you can use it to remove friction and make good habits easier to start.

Going to the gym

Pack your gym bag the night before and bring it to work with a small pre-workout snack. This way, all you have to do when work ends is go to the gym.

Studying

Leave your books, computer, and anything else you need ready on your desk. When it’s time to study, all you have to do is sit down, open your book or computer, and get started.

Reading

Leave your book where you normally plan to read. Make sure all you have to do is pick it up and open it.

Even a small step, such as having to get the book from a bookshelf, can create enough friction to make reading require more willpower.

20-second rule examples for breaking bad habits

The 20-second rule can also help you break bad habits by adding friction. Here are three examples of what that might look like in practice.

Every extra step gives you another chance to delay a good habit or avoid a bad one

Watching too much TV

Remove the batteries from the remote, put it away, and unplug the TV. Now, turning it on requires several extra steps instead of happening automatically.

The extra effort gives you more time to reconsider whether you actually want to watch it. The same approach can work with gaming consoles.

Reducing screen time

Remove distracting apps from your home screen so you have to actively search for them. You can also combine this with an app such as One Sec, which creates a short pause before the app opens.

That small amount of friction can be enough to interrupt the automatic urge to start scrolling and give you time to reconsider.

Reducing mindless snacking

Keep snacks out of immediate reach, or avoid keeping them at home altogether. You might still feel like having one, but having to go out and buy it creates much more friction than simply opening a cupboard.

The 20-second rule vs the 5-second rule

The 20-second rule and the 5-second rule are often confused, but they serve very different purposes.

The 20-second rule is about changing the amount of friction around a behavior. You make good habits easier to start and bad habits harder to access, usually by changing your environment or preparing in advance.

The 5-second rule is about activation. You count down from five and use zero as a signal to act. The goal is to give yourself a clear moment to begin before you have time to hesitate, procrastinate, or talk yourself out of it.

So, the 20-second rule changes the path to the behavior, while the 5-second rule gives you a signal to start.