Definition
Make it difficult is the inversion of Law 3 — to break a bad habit, increase the friction between the cue and the action until the behavior becomes inconvenient enough to skip.
Where Law 3 reduces steps for a good habit, the inversion adds steps for a bad one. Lock the phone in a drawer, delete the app, unplug the TV, hand the keys to a friend. Each barrier costs the bad habit a fraction of its likelihood.
Why it matters
How it works
Behavior bends toward the path of least resistance. Adding any obstacle — physical, temporal, or social — shifts the resistance landscape in your favor. The brain's craving still fires, but the cost of acting on it now exceeds the cost of dismissing it, and the action quietly fails to launch.
Clear's examples are deliberately mundane because the smaller the change, the more honest the test. Move the snacks out of the kitchen and into the basement; the snacks did not disappear, but each visit now costs you twelve stairs. Log out of every social media account on your laptop; the apps still exist, but each session costs a re-login. The result is fewer sessions and shorter ones.
The strategy works because it targets the response phase of the habit loop, not the craving. You don't need to want it less; you need it to be slightly harder to get. Pair this with a commitment device — a setup you cannot easily undo — and you've moved the bad habit from automatic to deliberate, where conscious choice has a chance to intervene.