Necessary Friction

Why our lives shouldn't become a frictionless existence.

May 16, 2025

Every 2-3 weeks, I get my haircut. The morning of the appointment, I go to the grocery store, get something that I will eat but probably don't need, and get cash back from my debit card within the same transaction. My barbershop is a cash only business. It creates friction. I keep cash on me, but that is more of a "break the glass in an emergency" situation. Every time I want a haircut, I must decide to go out of my way, get cash, and carve out time within the workday. I don't mind it. I embrace the friction. Multiple points exist where I can stop and ponder if I need this haircut. Do I really want to spend this money?

It is rare in a world that inches towards a frictionless existence. With the rise of credit and debit cards, carrying cash is becoming irregular. Rather than worrying about keeping track of $100, you carry a credit card with much higher limits and downside protection (freeze funds, cancel cards, dispute charges, etc.). It exemplifies how our world is becoming more seamless. You don't even need your card at the point of sale. You can store your card details or use your biometric data to check out, but I have never been a fan of it.

It becomes too easy. You don't question your impulse purchase of a 44th pair of shoes or a New England Patriots quarter zip while you rummage through your house looking for your wallet. Facial recognition populates your card details for you, not leaving any time to consider. The friction against our daily experiences dwindles, but a level of necessary friction remains.

Al, chatbots, and language learning models (LLMs) are the buzzwords around our frictionless experiences. They seek to make our lives easier and thus, simpler. The latest Al age startup is Cluely, which claims if you use it "you never have to think alone again". But it misses the point.

Never do I feel the best when I abstract away my agency and allow some Al assistant to take care of my problems. I gain nothing from that. I feel my best when I am down a Wikipedia rabbit hole or picking apart an excel file, and after a long exploration with multiple dead ends, I stumble upon the example or solution I crave. Not only do I walk away with solutions and more ideas, but I tapped into my agency. I taught myself something. This isn't meant to be a tirade against all Al. It can be useful in the right context while diagnosing an issue. It is best when it helps delete some friction but doesn't eliminate all of it.

A new, sad phenomenon is the proliferation of Al personas completing assignments for college students. The reason why we write college essays is not because they are fun or to fill time. It allows us to “show our work” to show an understanding of systems. They exercise our critical thinking muscle while reinforcing our self-belief that we can do hard things. Have you ever stressed about a college essay while trying to adhere to an arbitrary length requirement? I am sure. It’s not easy. The friction of laboring over the next sentence and combing through every word to convey our ideas in a simple, concise manner influences our self-belief.

Those beliefs become integral forces in our successes and failures with almost everything. Some students have begun to use chatbots for all their classes saying, "With ChatGPT, I can write an essay in two hours that normally takes 12." Yes, the issue around the broader message this sends about college is not overlooked, but friction shouldn’t be avoided. It should be managed and accepted.

I, of course, could use ChatGPT too to write. If I fed it a prompt to write this piece, it would do an adequate job. It might help me do the "thing" and reduce the friction, but it shouldn't replace the "thing" and eliminate the friction. You lose everything you would have gained doing the work yourself. I don't write to pollute people's inboxes with 1,000 words every week. Writing is an extension of my curiosity. It forces me to confront my thoughts, it shows me what I don't know, and allows me to avoid the manufactured endpoint of learning when we exit school. I mull over writing ideas, I cut through my piece trying to condense it, and get the benefits of doing the work myself. I reap the benefits because I sit and embrace the friction.

Science supports it. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist, talked about it with David Goggins on his podcast. Goggins was trying to articulate why he relishes doing these things even when the friction is high and everything is stacked against him. Huberman had the perfect scientific discovery for him,

“Most people don’t know this, but there’s a brain structure called the anterior midcingulate cortex… But what’s interesting about this brain area is there are now a lot of data in humans, not some mouse study, showing that when people do something they don’t want to do, like add three hours of exercise per day or per week, or when people who are trying to diet and lose weight resist eating something, when people do anything that they, and this is the important part, that they don’t want to do… This brain area gets bigger…
It’s especially large or grows larger in people that see themselves as challenged and overcome some challenge. And in people that live a very long time, this area keeps its size. In many ways, scientists are starting to think of the anterior midcingulate cortex not just as one of the seats of willpower, but perhaps as one of the seats of the will to live.”

We can build this area up, but as hard as we work to build it up, if we don’t continue to invest in things that are hard for us and embrace the necessary friction, it shrinks again. The friction is the critical ingredient to grow the anterior midcingulate cortex. If not, the rest just dwindles and withers away.

AI will never replace the human touch. It will never grow your anterior midcingulate cortex. Sometimes to get there, it is necessary to embrace the friction. As Bruce Springsteen once said,