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Are you “friction-maxxing” in your life and work? Friction in this context is the antidote to ultra-convenient tech, where we scroll on-demand news, ask AI to answer our questions, and sit half-attentive in virtual meetings. When we reject supposedly easy tech solutions, we embrace the friction of doing things ourselves, even if that requires more effort. Life becomes less convenient, slower — and conducted in person.

The concept of “friction-maxxing” was given a profile this month by Kathryn Jezer-Morton who, in an essay for The Cut, argued for “building up tolerance for ‘inconvenience’”, rather than treating it as something to be eliminated. Her concern was around parenting: she suggested enforcing periods of boredom for children because “without friction, most kids will have no reason to love reading, let alone think for themselves”.

For adults, this kind of friction-maxxing might mean cooking from scratch, rather than getting a meal delivered. At work it could be reintroducing in-person meetings or reading a full document, not an AI summary.

Helen Palmer, who works in learning and development, says for her, friction-maxxing means writing things down by hand. “I actively review my notes, find notes about my team in time for year end, reflect on successes, failures etc. I contest that I remember more from meetings this way.” Business consultant Sarah Mardle has seen a growing enthusiasm for in-person meetings, with colleagues “turning down a Teams intro call option in favour of a coffee in town, despite having to wait several weeks”.

But why make things harder at work, when staff are under pressure to use AI to be more productive?

According to an often-cited 2018 New York Times essay by Tim Wu, difficulty is worthwhile because it is a “constitutive feature of human experience”. He believes we should resist the “tyranny of convenience”, which is “all destination and no journey”, because the “journey” is the important part.

Outsourcing our intellect to AI without doing critical thinking first threatens us with what researchers call “cognitive atrophy”. AI hacks also create new problems: automated note-taking in meetings, for example, may make participants cagey about speaking openly. Sometimes, rejecting the supposed convenience of AI achieves better results. Auto-generated email replies might require no effort, but do they convey your nuanced view?

Recruitment is one area where the backlash against frictionless tech is underway. “When it’s easy to apply for hundreds of jobs in an hour, we end up with a frenetic situation that doesn’t serve firms or applicants well,” says Kester Brewin at the Institute for the Future of Work. “Finding the optimal level of friction to get the best ‘matches’ for jobs is something that needs urgent investigation.”

That might involve adding unexpected questions that require human answers, or incorporating events for candidates to meet employers in person. But there is a darker side to returning to people-powered recruitment: Brewin notes the return of “who you know” hiring and systems favouring privileged applicants.

Friction-maxxing may be unfair in other ways: only high-status workers have the autonomy to call offline meetings or set their own schedules. “We often find people use friction as a way of increasing the difficulty and inconvenience of a task, to create status around it, so it’s very difficult to do”, says André Spicer, executive dean at London’s Bayes Business School.

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Embracing friction away from the office can also help develop workplace skills. Abigail Hunt, a learning and development specialist at consultancy Deloitte, says taking up new hobbies as an adult — she is doing art classes — helps us in our careers. “By embracing friction, including feedback, I experiment more, fail more, pause and reflect more [and] learn more.”

The wider truth, perhaps, is that friction has become necessary for anyone who wants to defend human qualities against the tech onslaught.

“Many of my students are concerned that the convenience of tech will stop them from developing the nuanced judgment they aspire to have,” says Gianpiero Petriglieri, an associate professor of organisational behaviour at Insead business school. “A little bit like a controlling parent, it makes life easier for you, then you don’t know how to manage life on your own.”

To cultivate judgment, Petriglieri asks MBA students to host friends for a meal. “Cooking and hosting people is such a simple, practical gesture, and yet it is so symbolic. And friction is essential to it,” he says. “You need to be attentive, sensitive, present.”

Isabel Berwick writes the weekly Working It newsletter: sign up here.