How to end decision drift

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"It's the oldest story in the world. One day you're 17 and planning for someday. And then quietly, and without you ever really noticing, someday is today. And then someday is yesterday. And this is your life."

So said a famous teenage soap opera character. And he's right: drift is a real thing.

And it applies to more than just the sand melting through the hourglass: most of the changes you're proudest of won't be reversed...they'll just slowly drift back to how they were before.

That used to baffle me. You launch the new way of doing things, it works, and it lasts...for exactly as long as you're watching it. The week your attention moves on, the drift begins.

For years I called that backsliding and blamed people's commitment. The truth was less flattering to me: the old way was simply still easier.

If doing it right takes more steps, more logins, more thought than doing it the way everyone always has, then your eagle eye is the only thing holding the new way up. And attention is the one resource that always, eventually, runs out. That's default drift.

A change that depends on your monitoring it is just you, doing the work, indefinitely.

Which means the goal isn't to make people care more. It's to make the new way the lazy way—the thing a busy, distracted person does without deciding to, because the path of least resistance now runs through it.

Pick one change you're currently keeping alive by force of will. Don't recommit to it. Instead, change the world the same way you run a room: make the right things easy.

Try this

Find the point of friction working against you—the form, the budget line, the standing report, the thing that's still one click easier the old way—and change that one thing so the right behaviour happens on autopilot.

🌿 Change the default, not the people.