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. <\/p>\n
Helen Palmer, who works in learning and development, says for her, friction-maxxing means writing things down by hand. \u201cI 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.\u201d Business consultant Sarah Mardle has seen a growing enthusiasm for in-person meetings, with colleagues \u201cturning down a Teams intro call option in favour of a coffee in town, despite having to wait several weeks\u201d.<\/p>\n
But why make things harder at work, when staff are under pressure to use AI to be more productive? <\/p>\n
According to an often-cited 2018 New York Times essay by Tim Wu, difficulty is worthwhile because it is a \u201cconstitutive feature of human experience\u201d. He believes we should resist the \u201ctyranny of convenience\u201d, which is \u201call destination and no journey\u201d, because the \u201cjourney\u201d is the important part.<\/p>\n
Outsourcing our intellect to AI without doing critical thinking first threatens us with what researchers<\/a> call \u201ccognitive atrophy\u201d. AI hacks also create new problems: automated note-taking in meetings, for example, may make participants cagey about speaking openly<\/a>. 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?<\/p>\n Recruitment is one area where the backlash against frictionless tech is underway. \u201cWhen it\u2019s easy to apply for hundreds of jobs in an hour, we end up with a frenetic situation that doesn\u2019t serve firms or applicants well,\u201d says Kester Brewin at the Institute for the Future of Work. \u201cFinding the optimal level of friction to get the best \u2018matches\u2019 for jobs is something that needs urgent investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u201cwho you know\u201d hiring and systems favouring privileged applicants.<\/p>\n Friction-maxxing may be unfair in other ways: only high-status workers have the autonomy to call offline meetings or set their own schedules. \u201cWe often find people use friction as a way of increasing the difficulty and inconvenience of a task, to create status around it, so it\u2019s very difficult to do\u201d, says Andr\u00e9 Spicer, executive dean at London\u2019s Bayes Business School.<\/p>\n Recommended<\/p>\n
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