Before I begin, a quick caveat. All that I’m discussing here should be with the knowledge that I understand that there is a healthy level of challenge and obstacles that enables personal growth as opposed to an extreme where the challenges of living in the world can be oppressive and crushing. I hope you all have the type that helps you grow.
I’ve been thinking about cognitive friction lately, the obstacles in place that teach us how to navigate life’s choices. I sometimes think of this as the concept of constraint as well. Regardless, the idea of friction is an essential tool, a part of being human, that the tech industry is doing its damndest to erase from our lives. I say all this as a member of the tech industry, so know that this is something I’ll be thinking about when making choices about how I write software. My personal mission is to build things that genuinely make people’s lives better, especially in navigating arcane systems. This now includes looking at what problems reduce friction in a way that’s helpful vs those that instead reduce autonomy under the guise of reducing friction.
I recently read an essay that sent me down this thought path. In “In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing” by Kathryn Jezer-Morton, the author speaks from the perspective of a parent, but the message resonated with me. It speaks about the better living through escapism that Silicon Valley is selling:
According to the emergent ideology of Silicon Valley, most people would prefer not to be human; they’ve demonstrated this through their revealed preferences in the way they use the apps they’re being sold. That’s all the proof that tech companies need to invest as much money as possible in friction-elimination tools that effectively dehumanize users.
While not a parent myself, I couldn’t get this idea out of my head. Friction is one of the very things that makes us human. Our physical world presents certain obstacles, such as distance, weather, and the concept of time. It shows us that we can’t actually do everything or have everything. We have to make choices, and in doing so we have to hone our discernment. We have to get wiser, or not, and that choice determines what friction we must face next.
You can see the goal of friction reduction in every passive income idea, every productivity hack, every app that promises it will make you better, faster, take away all your pain, do your job for you (I’m looking at you Claude Code and the rest of your buddies). I understand that our current system of capitalism is in part to blame for the desire for easier income, but that’s beyond the scope of this essay, so I shan’t digress.
If an app is making all of your choices, doing all your work for you, and organizing every aspect of your day, who’s life are you living, exactly? Figuring out what’s important to do each day, in your finite number of hours, in partnership with other people, can give meaning to that work no matter what that work entails.
If all that you do is optimized down to the minute and you’re tracking your quality of life down to the calorie consumed or spent, what will you have to talk about at the end of the day? What story will you have to tell your loved ones? Will you even have loved ones? After all, they consume resources and add friction to your life. Life challenges yield stories and aid in a shared understanding of what it means to be human, together.
Our brains are not meant to have it all just as we’re not built to process the 24/7 doom feed of the world. That’s evolved friction and it’s okay to have that friction. There’s value in keeping your focus smaller and doing what’s within your capacity rather than trying to save the world or, as is often the case, carry the grief of the world. We can give a better quality of care if we are fully present with a smaller area of concern.
Friction yields art and innovation. Necessity is the mother of invention. It’s genuinely good for us. I’ve long understood the usefulness of friction since my days as a graphic designer. Creativity in that work thrives on constraints. The example I come back to here is Chip Kidd’s TED talk where he presents various book covers he’s designed and the stories behind the processes. Friction is a key theme here, too. Constraints of technology, of form, of content. The puzzle of creating a cover design that represents the author’s work while also acknowledging that the book needs to sell copies.
I see a small but growing resistance to the frictionless, disembodied existence Silicon Valley would like us to pay our dwindling cash and attention on. I may be partly in a particular bubble created by THE ALGORITHM, but even acknowledging that influence, over the last year I’ve seen an uptick on newsletters, videos, and other posts espousing buying physical media and canceling streaming services. Ironically, despite not being on TikTok, BookTok’s influence on Barnes & Noble felt like the start of it, or at least where I became aware of it. (I do love a good sprayed edge edition)
There are a few themes I see in those transitions beyond the ethical choices folks are making. One is what I’ll call algorithm fatigue, where one starts to get bored of being presented the same artists or similar music over and over and THE ALGORITHM’s grip proves impossible to break out of. Another, more recent theme, centers on a desire to escape the encroaching inevitability of AI Slop overtaking human-created work across media and social spaces.
The third theme is similar to the others as it is partly about running away from something, but it’s about running toward something, too. In this case, running toward a tactile, sensual experience that only physical media can provide. Books have a wonderful smell and heft in the hand. CDs just genuinely sound better and have liner notes. DVDs have special features long abandoned by streaming services.
They all also return us to a place where friction introduces some sort of meaning into the proceedings. You have the constraints of price, shelf space, etc. Choices must be made and in making them we learn a bit more about what we feel is valuable, a bit more about who we are. It’s less disposable, more concrete, and we are more human for those choices.
This doesn’t have to be an all or nothing situation, of course. I’m not likely to unsubscribe from my various streaming services for now. They are convenient and some of my favorite things are just not available in the physical world.
There’s also various accessibility challenges that digital services and apps provide, beyond the more obvious benefits. For myself, I wouldn’t be lost without my digital organization tools (because Bullet Journaling exists) but keeping myself on track with all my projects would be a lot more challenging. I think meditation apps have been a net good benefit to the world. I love that my scale helps me track my ever-shifting weight. Basically, there are various benefits to using the creations that come from the magic of software engineering.
So, with this knowledge that friction is now a shrinking resource and tool, how do we proceed? For myself, I’ll be paying even more attention to where I’m seeking the easy way out and asking why. Why reduce the friction here? What will I be giving up in experience and learning opportunities if I have an app do this for me? Most importantly, how will this choice affect the story I have to tell my loved ones around the dinner table tonight?