Friction-Maxxing

 Does life of late feel just too easy? Are you keen to make it harder than it already is? If that sounds like a genuinely demented question in the week that the world came close to threatened Armageddon, then fair enough. I bridled too when I read last week about friction-maxxing, the supposed trend for doing things in slightly more effortful, time consuming or analogue ways - cooking from scratch instead of ordering a delivery, finding your way using road signs instead of just plugging in the satnav, or reading a book rather than half-listening to the audio version of it - as a form of creative resistance to the inexorable march of big tech through our lives?...

Idle Moments
Walter Langley (1852-1922)
Photo Credit: Penlee House Gallery & Museum [CC BY-ND] 

Besides, the list published this week by the Washington Post of ways to friction-maxx - which included superhuman feats such as seeing your friends in person rather than WhatsApping them, and actively trying to remember something rather than using Google - sounds suspiciously like the rebranding under an  irritating new name of what used to be considered merely living. Your grandparents would have scoffed at the idea that any of these things were remotely difficult, or that making an effort to do them could somehow make you a better, more resilient person...

What Kathryn Jezer-Morton, the writer who first coined the term friction-maxxing... writes [that] we have allowed ourselves to fall for the idea that "reading is boring; talking is awkward; moving is tiring; leaving the house is daunting." ...

In a world where everything becomes easier and faster, regulating emotion may be an increasing challenge. Making an everyday task even slightly harder forces people to slow down and think about what they are actually doing, rather than acting on impulse, which is why you are probably more likely to say something you later regret when firing off a quick, furious text in the heat of the moment than when laboriously handwriting a letter. But perhaps the main skill at risk in a more friction-free world is that of patience with other people, in all their infinite capacity to be annoying...

(Gabby Hinsliff, The Guardian, 2026)

What's the effort involved in cooking from scratch or reading a book? Surely this shouldn't be seen as a trend or a form of creative resistance to big tech? This is normal behaviour for many adults as is the use of technology in our domestic and working lives. Seeing your friends and trying to remember something are everyday events - aren't they?  Surely many more than just grandparents would scoff at the supposed difficulty in carrying out some of the tasks mentioned.

As for "reading is boring; talking is awkward; moving is tiring; leaving the house is daunting" where is the evidence for this. How many adults did this Kathryn Jezer-Morton interview? If she did how many of the sample were of a certain age group? In conclusion: a new trend or a re-branding of ordinary behaviour?