Friction is bad.
This is the message that is drilled into us in both professional and private contexts. Friction is inefficient. Friction blocks progress. Friction is something we must strive to remove or overcome! Ideally with technology, according to large technology companies.
Nearly all of the technology we interact with exists to overcome friction, primarily the friction of time. Productivity tools are directly focused on time. Recommendation engines, from Amazon to Netflix, are designed to get us to spend more time. Social media is a fight against the friction of complex human relationships and experiences that take time to develop, manage, or attain.
And now we have AI. AI fights against the friction of thought. Thinking is messy, and by that fact it takes time. It requires background information and a framework for making sense of that information. Then there are the judgments we make as we consider that information. Then, there’s the time and awareness we might spend challenging our thinking.
It might sound ironic, given that I have spent my career helping companies grow largely by removing friction, but I love friction. I also think about it differently from most people.
Technology, which itself is built to address social pressures of our time, teaches us to view friction as an optimization problem. How can we do more? How can we streamline operations? How can we hack our brains to be more effective? How can we manage our inboxes? How can we keep in touch with all our friends and family and colleagues? How can I squeeze in those last episodes of <insert your favorite series here>?
Let me suggest that you first consider friction a problem of choice. There are two reasons for doing so.
The first is that optimization is extremely resource intensive, for people and companies. You need to understand where the friction lies, how best to remove it, perhaps deal with edge cases—and meanwhile the world hasn’t stopped moving so you still need to do things the old friction-y way. Instead, ask whether you should even be doing it. Is it absolutely necessary to continue doing the thing that’s causing friction? It’s much easier to fix a problem when you stop it at its source.
The second is that some types of friction have far greater value than others. Yes, I see the allure of AI tools that summarize your overflowing inbox. But where does the technology that mediates our relationships (social media) and thinking (AI) fit in?
The events of the first half of 2025 have made me highly sensitive to this discussion. In addition to losing my most dear family member, I have spent a lot of time thinking about what my unique value is as a person—to companies, to friends, and to family. This reflection is, by nature, time consuming. Should I be treating it as an optimization problem or a choice problem? Treating it as an optimization problem means offloading engagement to social media and AI. Is that really how I want to do it? Or, is this something I should be doing in an unmediated way by fighting through the sloppy, inefficient, and occasionally painful middle to reach a more meaningful end?
Let’s be more concrete. I spend at least an hour a day engaged with an artificial intelligence (ChatGPT 4-o3). It is an integral part of my advisory practice and my writing. I love it. I also don’t let it out of my sight. In terms of “jobs to be done,” it is my research assistant and copy-editor. A year ago, I’d have spent hours “googling” and editing drafts. It is my intellectual sparring partner, too. It does a fine job critiquing my arguments, pointing out weaknesses, and suggesting reinforcements. But that’s where it stops. I don’t let it absolve me from the friction of coming up with my own ideas or my own frameworks for how to think about different topics.
I encourage you to approach matters of friction from this perspective. Begin by thinking of friction as a problem of choice rather than optimization. Then look at the payoffs. Will living with this friction help me and my business?
Above all, I implore you to treat relationships and thinking differently from your inbox. The friction we experience in these matters has value. It is friction we should experience because it gives meaning to our lives and makes us more valuable to ourselves and to others. Through it, we build reasoning, judgment, empathy, resilience, originality, and the ability to be alone with our thoughts. That is worth way more than the productivity that is “lost.”
People, stuff, travel, reading, and more
- No travel for a little while after the world tour.
- I’m enjoying Carsten Henn’s follow-up book to The Door-to-Door Bookstore, entitled The Story Baker. It’s about a baker who brings together a small community through his craft. Henn creates such beautiful characters. I’m reading the book in French and am enjoying the challenge of learning new vocabulary as well.
- Want to meet up? Book time or just reply to this email.