We teach activation energy comfortably in chemistry.
Every student learns that a reaction requires sufficient energy to begin. Lower the activation barrier, and the reaction becomes more likely to occur. It’s one of the most fundamental ideas in science. Then we leave the laboratory and somehow forget that the same principle applies almost everywhere else.
We build health systems that require exhausted people to navigate impossible pathways. Meanwhile, academic systems where collaboration is slowed by forms, approvals, interfaces, contracts and administrative complexity. Even simple workplaces tasks involve passwords, policies, multiple platforms and invisible processes that no one ever explains. Then we wonder why people aren’t more motivated. Maybe motivation isn’t the whole story. Maybe we’ve underestimated friction.
Over the past few months, I’ve spent more time helping researchers navigate ethics and governance. I’m certainly not a governance expert. What I seem to be good at is reading complex requirements, understanding how the pieces fit together, and translating them into something people can actually use.
The barriers are rarely dramatic. A missing signature. An unclear responsibility. A process that nobody explains until it’s too late. Three systems that don’t quite connect. Individually, they’re small. Collectively, they’re enough to stop good research before it even begins.
And the more I look, the more I see the same pattern everywhere.
In health. In exercise. In family life. Even in the fruit bowl sitting on my kitchen bench. The fruit is fresh. I bought it intending to eat it. Yet somehow it quietly becomes compost. I’m beginning to suspect that’s not a motivation problem either.
but… I’ll come back to that.
Perhaps we spend too much time trying to change people, and not enough time redesigning the systems they live within. Because lowering activation energy doesn’t lower standards. It simply makes good things easier to happen.
I’m starting to think activation energy might be one of the most useful ideas chemistry has given us, not just for understanding reactions, but for understanding people.
To be continued ….