Sunday morning, December 7th. Watching someone swipe through hundreds of songs looking for the perfect one, never actually listening to anything. The friction of having to commit to an album created deeper listening. Now we've removed that friction—and the depth with it.

The Frictionless Promise

Here's the pitch we've all bought:

Friction is waste. Inefficiency. An artifact of older, cruder systems. Every click removed, every step eliminated, every second saved is progress. The best interface is invisible. The best experience is effortless. Remove all obstacles between desire and fulfillment.

The promise: When everything is frictionless, you'll finally be free to do what matters.

The reality: When everything is frictionless, nothing matters. Effort creates value. Resistance creates growth. Difficulty creates meaning. We've built a perfectly smooth world and discovered we're sliding through it without traction.

Thesis: Friction has two types—bad friction that serves no purpose except to waste time and energy, and good friction that creates resistance necessary for growth, learning, and meaning. Modern technology excels at removing the first type but can't distinguish it from the second. We've removed so much friction that we've accidentally removed most of what makes things worth doing. The solution isn't to add back arbitrary obstacles—it's to recognize that some difficulties are features, not bugs, and to deliberately preserve meaningful resistance in a world optimized for ease.

The Two Frictions

Not all friction is created equal. Let's be precise:

Bad Friction: Pure Waste

These are obstacles that serve no purpose except to consume time and energy:

  • Filling out the same form multiple times
  • Waiting on hold for customer service
  • Commuting through traffic
  • Navigating deliberately confusing websites
  • Searching for information that should be immediately accessible
  • Bureaucratic processes designed to discourage action

Characteristics of bad friction:

  • Repetitive and mindless
  • Teaches you nothing
  • Benefits no one
  • Could be eliminated without loss
  • Creates frustration without growth

Remove this mercilessly. Technology's war on bad friction is genuinely good. One-click checkout eliminates meaningless repetition. GPS removes pointless wandering. Search engines prevent information hide-and-seek.

Good Friction: Necessary Resistance

But then there's friction that creates value through resistance:

  • The difficulty of learning a skill
  • The awkwardness of making new friends
  • The slowness of reading a challenging book
  • The discomfort of physical training
  • The effort required to create something original
  • The delay between wanting and having

Characteristics of good friction:

  • Teaches you something
  • Builds capacity
  • Creates depth over time
  • Removal leaves you weaker
  • Discomfort with purpose

The problem: Modern systems can't tell the difference. They optimize for "ease" and "convenience" without asking whether the difficulty was doing something important.

What We Lost When We Removed Friction

Let's get concrete. Here's what actually happens when you remove different types of friction:

Music

Old friction: You buy an album. You're committed. You listen to the whole thing, even the songs you're not sure about initially. Over time, you discover depth. The "skip" friction forces engagement.

New frictionless: Infinite music, instant access, effortless skipping. Result? You never commit. You never get past the surface. Every song competes for instant gratification. You lose the ability to appreciate things that reward sustained attention.

What was lost: The capacity for deep listening. The relationship you build with an album over repeated listens. The discovery that initial difficulty often precedes appreciation.

Learning

Old friction: You struggle with a problem. No immediate help available. You have to think, try different approaches, fail repeatedly. It's uncomfortable.

New frictionless: Instant answers. Step-by-step solutions. AI tutors. Result? You never build problem-solving muscles. You learn to recognize patterns but not to generate solutions. You're fluent at looking things up but can't think without a search bar.

What was lost: The problem-solving capacity that comes from struggling. The confidence that emerges from figuring something out. The neural pathways that form through effortful thinking.

Relationships

Old friction: Meeting people is awkward. You have to tolerate initial discomfort. Small talk is painful. Getting to know someone takes time and effort.

New frictionless: Swipe right. Instant connection or instant rejection. Awkward moment? Exit the conversation. Result? You never build tolerance for social discomfort. You never develop the skill of turning awkwardness into connection. Every relationship must be immediately smooth or it's not worth pursuing.

What was lost: The depth that emerges from pushing through initial awkwardness. The friendships that start rocky and become profound. The social skills that develop only through uncomfortable practice.

Physical Development

Old friction: Exercise is hard. Your muscles burn. You want to stop. You push through anyway.

New frictionless: Well, we haven't figured out how to remove this friction completely—though we keep trying with pills, shortcuts, and "hacks." Result when we succeed even partially? People who've never built physical resilience. Who don't know what their body can do under stress.

What was preserved: Only because we physically can't remove it yet. But notice how much weaker we've become in areas where we could remove the friction.

Consumption

Old friction: You want something. You have to save money. You have to go to the store. You have to carry it home. Time passes between desire and acquisition.

New frictionless: One-click purchase. Same-day delivery. Result? You buy impulsively. You accumulate without considering. The delay that let you reconsider is gone. You own things you don't value because acquisition became effortless.

What was lost: The deliberation that creates intentionality. The appreciation that comes from anticipation. The value you attach to things you worked to acquire.

Why We Can't Tell the Difference

The challenge: both types of friction feel the same in the moment.

When you're struggling with a difficult concept, it feels exactly like struggling with a poorly explained concept. The mental sensation is identical—confusion, frustration, desire to quit. But one is building your capacity to understand complex things. The other is just wasting your time.

When you're experiencing social awkwardness with a new acquaintance, it feels exactly like pointless social friction with someone incompatible. The discomfort is the same. But one is the necessary stage before real friendship. The other is a signal to disengage.

The system can't distinguish them. So it optimizes for removing both.

Every recommendation algorithm, every "smart" interface, every AI assistant is trained to reduce friction. Not "bad friction"—just friction. Because the training signal is simple: did the user show signs of frustration? Then reduce the source.

The system can't tell whether that frustration was building toward something valuable.

The Atrophy Pattern

Here's what happens systematically:

  1. Technology removes a friction

    • Usually starting with legitimate bad friction
    • "Look how much easier this is!"

  2. Humans adapt to the new baseline

    • We recalibrate expectations around the easier path
    • The old difficulty becomes unthinkable

  3. Capacity atrophies

    • The muscles we built pushing against resistance weaken
    • Skills that required practice fade

  4. We become dependent

    • Can't function without the frictionless system
    • The old way is now genuinely harder because we're weaker

  5. We're worse off in ways we can't quite identify

    • Something feels wrong but we can't articulate it
    • "Kids these days can't..." but it's not just kids, it's all of us

Example: Navigation

GPS removed the friction of getting lost. Great! Except we also stopped developing spatial reasoning. We stopped building mental maps. We stopped noticing our surroundings. Now we're dependent and directionally incompetent. The system made us weaker, then became necessary because we're weak.

Example: Memory

Smartphones removed the friction of remembering. Phone numbers, appointments, facts—externalized. Great! Except our actual memory capacity is atrophying. We're losing the skill of remembering. And more subtly, we're losing the web of associations that forms when you have to actively recall rather than passively retrieve.

Example: Attention

Infinite scroll removed the friction of choosing what to consume next. Great! Except we've lost the capacity to direct our own attention. We've become stimulus-response machines. The algorithm serves, we consume. The muscle of intentional attention has atrophied.

The Friction Solution (Actual Advice)

So what do we actually do? We can't go backwards. We won't abandon GPS or smartphones or modern conveniences. But we can be strategic about which frictions we preserve.

1. Identify Good Friction in Your Life

Ask about any "ease" feature:

  • What capacity was I building when this was harder?
  • What am I losing by having this be effortless?
  • Is this removing waste or removing resistance?

Examples:

  • Calculator apps remove arithmetic friction. What are you losing? Mental math ability, number sense, the experience of thinking with numbers. Maybe preserve this for some calculations.
  • Autocorrect removes spelling friction. What are you losing? Spelling competence, attention to words, the slight slowdown that aids thinking. Maybe disable occasionally.
  • Social media feeds remove content selection friction. What are you losing? The ability to direct your attention, intentionality about consumption, agency. Definitely preserve this somewhere.

2. Deliberately Add Back Resistance

This isn't about being a Luddite. It's about intentional training:

Physical friction: Do some things the hard way on purpose. Take the stairs. Walk instead of drive occasionally. Cook from scratch sometimes. Your body needs resistance to stay functional.

Cognitive friction: Solve problems without immediately googling. Read difficult books. Write before you edit. Think before you delegate to AI. Your mind needs resistance to stay sharp.

Social friction: Have some in-person awkward conversations. Call instead of text sometimes. Push through initial discomfort with new people. Your social capacity needs resistance to develop.

Creative friction: Make things with constraints. Use limited tools. Face the blank page without templates. Create without infinite undo. Your creativity needs resistance to strengthen.

3. Design Your Own Friction

You can create good friction deliberately:

  • Deliberate delays: Wait before purchasing. Save things to read later and actually read them later. Let ideas marinate before acting.

  • Artificial limits: Limit yourself to one album per week. One book at a time. One project. Finite choices force engagement.

  • Manual modes: Turn off autocomplete sometimes. Navigate without GPS occasionally. Calculate without a calculator. Use typewriters, notebooks, basic tools.

  • Committed consumption: Pick something and commit to finishing it even when it gets hard. Albums, books, projects, courses. Build the muscle of pushing through.

4. Protect Growth Zones

Some domains are especially important to keep friction in:

Learning: Make sure you're struggling sometimes. If everything you learn comes easy, you're not learning—you're reviewing. Seek material at the edge of your competence.

Creating: Keep some creative work hard. If your tools make everything effortless, you're executing, not developing. Find mediums that resist you.

Relationships: Don't optimize away all social discomfort. Some of your best relationships will start awkward. Build tolerance for imperfect interactions.

Physical capacity: Maintain contact with physical difficulty. Your body was built for resistance. It degrades without it.

5. Teach Friction

If you have kids, employees, or students:

Don't remove all obstacles. Let them struggle productively. The gift isn't a smooth path—it's the capacity to handle rough ones.

  • Let them be bored sometimes (boredom is friction that creates creativity)
  • Let them fail at things (failure is friction that creates resilience)
  • Let them figure things out (confusion is friction that creates understanding)
  • Let them be uncomfortable socially (awkwardness is friction that creates social skill)

The goal isn't to make things arbitrarily hard. It's to preserve the difficulty that builds capacity.

The Real Point

Here's what this is actually about:

We've confused "easy" with "better." We've assumed that reducing effort always improves outcomes. But humans are adaptation machines—we grow through resistance. Remove all resistance and we atrophy.

The solution isn't to make everything hard. It's not performative difficulty or romanticizing struggle. It's recognizing that difficulty and value are often connected. That the things we most treasure often required friction to acquire or develop.

Good friction is the resistance that makes you stronger pushing against it.

Technology should absolutely remove pointless friction—the repetitive, the bureaucratic, the meaningless obstacles. But we need to get much better at identifying which frictions are doing something important.

Some difficulties are problems to solve. Others are features to preserve.

The trick is knowing which is which—and having the courage to keep things hard when hard is what makes them valuable.

Concrete takeaways:

  1. Audit your frictions - Identify where things used to be harder. Ask what capacity you built through that difficulty.

  2. Choose your easy - Be selective about which conveniences you adopt. Some friction is worth keeping.

  3. Train deliberately - Add back resistance in key domains: physical, cognitive, social, creative.

  4. Commit sometimes - Fight the urge to optimize every choice. Pick something and push through difficulty.

  5. Preserve growth zones - Protect areas where struggle creates capacity from being optimized into ease.

The frictionless life isn't the good life. The examined friction is. Some resistance is just what you need.

Today's Sketch

December 07, 2025