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Redefining Friction: Physics vs. Process

What does friction mean to you? For most of my life, friction has just simply described a physics concept in which something rubs against something else in some way, causing a slowdown and causing heat. But now, and now is variable depending on what sector of work you’re in. Friction describes the same thing, but it’s metaphorically for processes. And you know, I’m all about systems and processes.

Intentional Friction in App Design

Here’s an example. In the new app I created that allows you to get stuff done. When you add to-do items, you can actually swipe them forward into the future. So, if you swipe it to the right, it appears on tomorrow. There’s also an arrow that you can hit to go to the next day and the next day and the next day. So, if you want to place something, let’s say a week ahead of time, you actually have to hit that button seven times. Friction. And people could say, “Well, Mark, what if I want to push something 25 days into the future? I have to hit that button 25 times.” Correct. It’s friction by design. I want it to feel like you are putting it off all that time because if I didn’t do that, you could just type in a date or use a selector to grab a date and go there. It’s gone for a month and a half. Well, if you’re pushing something that far into the future, it should really be a calendar item. But if you’re pushing something into the future, it should feel like you’re pushing it into the future.

In building this app, I learned a lot about intentional friction. I learned a lot about removing it, which is what I always try to do in any process I create. But I also learned about where it’s actually appropriate.

My Typewriter: Friction to Prevent Failure

I have a vintage Remington number 12 typewriter. I actually wrote my first story on it. And no, I’m not that old because it was created in the 20s and 30s. Every key is connected to a rather slender, thin piece of metal that has a little hammer at the end that matches the key that you hit. When you hit the key, it swings upward and hits the ink tape and creates the image onto the piece of paper. Now, on a piano, the keys do something similar. They have hammers that hit strings. On a piano, though, all those keys and hammers are parallel. You can hit as many keys as you want and they’ll all hit at the same time and not interact with each other. Not so for the typewriter. If you hit two keys at once, they will try to meet each other at the very top and they can get entangled.

There’s an old tale about the design of the keyboard, which is the modern one we use today, being designed so that you would type slower. It actually was a designed to intentionally create a lot of friction and slowing you down. Well, so the truth is it’s not exactly like that. Yes, it does slow you down, but the reason being is they tried to separate certain keys so that you wouldn’t easily hit two of the keys that would smash into each other. Again, intentional friction.

Identifying Unintentional vs. Intentional Friction

One of the most exciting things for me is that when I’m introduced to a process, a system, whether it’s a person and how they conduct their life and try to get things done or an actual business and their systems in place is when I find unintentional friction. I find something in place that slows something down. They go down an avenue. They go instead of going ABC, they go A X Z B and then they come back to C and and we’re able to remove that and say no ABC. See, no more friction.

But you have to respect the friction that’s in place because some of it’s intentional. Now, some of it works that it’s worked itself into it to be intentional. And you can look at a process and think, well, that’s inefficient. We’ll just do this. But if you remove the intentional friction, you can find that the system will actually break.

Why Some Processes Need to Be Slow: Divorce & Marriage

Let’s use another fun example. Oh, let’s say divorce. If someone wants to file for divorce, they don’t make a phone call. And then the people on the other end say, “Hey, thanks for calling. Why don’t you guys just pop down? We’ll take care of that.” The friction that’s in place typically is that you fill out a bunch of paperwork and then they place something on the calendar and they sort of hope that you don’t show up for it because if you don’t it gets removed from the calendar and the divorce isn’t even happening. That’s intentional friction to make it harder for people to just say, “Yeah, I don’t want to do this thing anymore that I said I would do forever.”

I’m not in any way, shape, or form disparaging people who have gone through a divorce, but that is the system in place, and it does make some sense. And the same, of course, is true for marriage, for getting married. Now, granted, you can do drive-through marriages in Vegas and so forth, but that gets to something that I talked about in my podcast episode called become ceremonious. And when you have a ceremony attached to something, it slows it down and it makes it more important. It creates more friction. And again, your mind might be saying, “Well, that’s not a bad thing.” No, friction is not a bad thing. It’s a neutral thing. Just like the monsters and unicorns you may have learned about recently. As human beings, we have speeds. We slow down. We speed up. And again, there’s a podcast episode on the the speed of your life. And many times we talk about that. We say slow down, you know, take time to smell the roses and all that stuff, you know, apply some friction. Apply some friction, slow down and do that.

Applying Friction to Relationships and Work

One final example is the sword and the sunflower. It has a lot of friction in it. It It is a slow read. It’s a slow read because if you pay attention, you get a whole bunch of payoffs. When I wrote it, did I say, “Oh, I’m going to put some friction in here.” No, that was just the way it was written. Let’s talk about you. You may have some business processes in place or a way the reason or the way that you cook the way that you do. Or when you approach relationships with someone, you may introduce intentional friction to slow down the beginning of the relationship. So maybe you can savor it and enjoy it and make sure it’s the right thing for you to do. This may be applied directly also to new hires at your company where there’s a certain amount of friction to make sure they’re the right person for the job or even when introducing a new task, a skill, responsibility to someone in your workplace. There’s some friction involved in that. And you may be thinking right now, wait a second, there’s no friction at all. People are kind of like floundering. Maybe this is why people are floundering. We just sort of let them go with that. we don’t push back a little bit or apply friction. And you’ll find the paradox of like slowing something down in that way or applying friction can actually make it a better thing. And that’s one of the eye opening things of really discovering the friction in your life is when you discover the things that are slowing you down or in place intentionally. This intentional friction I mentioned and how what a wonderful thing it is.

Taking Action: Evaluating Friction in Your Life

So, as always, we raise your awareness about something and then we say, well, what are we going to do about it? And I would say the what are we going to do about it part is you should look at your life and look for intentional and unintentional friction. the way that you deal with your kids, the way that you prepare prepare meals, the way that you deal with your spouse or loved ones or friends, the the way that things are done in your workplace, the stuff you have control over, and the stuff you don’t have control over. And you may find that you are intentionally going around friction that you feel unnecessary in your workplace. No, I don’t fill that out. No, we just sort of skip that form. It would behoove you and give you a much more enjoyable life to remove the unintentional friction and respect the friction that’s in place. You may even find that, hey, there’s a place in my life where I need to put more friction. Now, if that sounds crazy, you could say, well, it’s way too easy for me to run to the refrigerator and grab that stuff that makes me not so thin. So, if there was friction between you and the refrigerator, friction between you and accessing that, then it would be harder for you to overeat or go off your diet.

Actionable Homework with CheckMark™

If you’re using CheckMark™, my productivity app, you’ll find this episode listed under the episodes list on the dashboard. And here’s something really cool. You know, I mention homework in these episodes a lot where you pause it or what have you. I really hope that people think about them later and so forth, but I can’t exactly expect people to like whip out a notepad or what have you. Now, you don’t have to. If you go to the project library screen, you’ll find the this episode and all you have to do is click on it and hit start pr...

What is Friction and When is it a Good Thing?