The Path of Least Resistance
You have heard the line take the path of least resistance a thousand times. It is espoused by many, but practiced by few. Procrastinators fear it, because the last thing they want is momentum. They prefer everything to stay put, supported by a concrete foundation of excuses. But even among the non‑procrastinators, most people rarely follow it. They would rather take the complex path, because complexity makes them feel smarter, more intellectual. My theory is that it is a leftover reflex from school papers in the 1960s to 1990s, where you got an A‑plus for three‑syllable words instead of clean execution.
Disrupters like Elon Musk have made entire careers by refusing to overcomplicate the obvious. One of my favourite examples is the time an engineer told him that a cooling system for part of the Falcon 9 would cost several million dollars. Instead of nodding gravely and commissioning a taskforce, Musk did something almost childlike in its simplicity. He asked what a household air‑conditioning unit costs. When the answer came back in the low thousands, he told the team to buy a few, pull them apart, and adapt them for the rocket. Problem solved. No committees. No whiteboards. No theatre. That is tactical clarity.
The path of least resistance is not laziness. It is velocity beating friction. It is outcome over optics. The best path is the one that gets you there with the least wasted energy. I have been in rooms where the default instinct is to overcomplicate. Build a custom solution from scratch. Write a forty‑page report when one page would do. Negotiate a bespoke licence when a public‑domain alternative is sitting right there. I have learned to ask, What is the simplest, fastest, cleanest, legal way to get this done. And then I do that.
The path of least resistance applies to every aspect of strategic execution, improving internal strengths, overcoming internal weaknesses, leveraging external opportunities, and mitigating external threats. I call this the IO‑LM SWOT Framework. If you rearrange the first letters of the key words in that sentence, you will see why.
So if you are improving, overcoming, leveraging, or mitigating, find the path of least resistance. Proper operators do not care about theatre, optics, or performances. They care about outcomes. And outcomes are achieved faster if you take the path of least resistance. If the path fails, so what. You have failed fast. Pivot. Choose the next path of least resistance. You can keep repeating this while the performers are doing the fifty‑eighth rewrite of the script.
The river does not argue with the rock. It flows around it. Be the river.
About Jason Bresnehan
Jason writes in a modular, mind‑drift style that moves between business, recovery, faith, anthropology, and the oddities of everyday life without warning or apology. His work blends operator‑grade clarity with sideways narrative turns — the kind that start in a boardroom, drift through Scripture or Tasmanian riverbanks, and land in a piece of doctrine you didn’t see coming.
He has spent years helping organisations and people get unstuck, and his writing reflects the same instinct: take something messy, name it cleanly, and make it usable. His pieces — whether on addiction, Catholic symbolism, business operators, or human quirks — aren’t lectures. They’re field notes. Observations. Fragments designed for real people in real moments, including the tired executive delayed in an airport lounge at 11:45pm.
Jason publishes micro‑chapters as he writes them — standalone pieces that don’t follow a cadence or a theme. They accumulate over time into a larger body of work, shaped by curiosity, faith, operator discipline, and a refusal to perform — just get outcomes.
Founder of the Hadspen Foundation, Jason is committed to building frameworks for spiritual recovery that are both repeatable and personal. His writing is guided by discernment, narrative cadence, and the belief that doctrine should support—not overshadow—the human story.