A concept that has dominated tech and social engineering for the past century is friction reduction. Friction is the idea of difficulty between a user and a task. The more steps a user has to take to accomplish something, the more friction. Our technology and software culture has primed us to expect very little friction. But I’ve noticed that time and time again high performers are those who find friction and move through it. In the entrepreneurship/business world this is called a moat. Something that would prevent competition from easily encroaching on your territory.
I recently noticed that I’ve been attracting two types of people on almost opposite ends of the spectrum. One type is a more of a middle grounder loser/winner. They overcome friction up to a certain point before they give up or lose confidence. Being around these people has made me uncomfortable because I don’t want to catch their cooties as I’m trying to clean out the part of me that resonates with this habit. The others are the hero-monsters. Those who relentlessly solve real problems. They become monsters to their enemies. Taking a stance and having solid opinions on how they will and won’t move through the world. Pleasantly, I’ve been attracting more monsters who are waiting for me to slay the beast, wear its hide and join their ranks.. Rubbing shoulders with them both the winner-losers and the monsters has led me to the same self reflection questions:
Where does the unnecessary and necessary friction within my life exist? Where am I not pushing hard enough? Where am I cheating myself out of worthwhile hard work?
I question my circumstances vs discipline. Sometimes I think “If only….”, creating hypothetical conditionals for my success that are unlikely. One concrete example being “If only I could have more space/time to dedicate to studying [insert concept] I’d be [insert goal] next year!”. Creating conditional limitations before I try to power through the existing friction and try.
Rubbing shoulders with the monsters, who see the potential in me, changes those thoughts to something more actionable. I feel a tension behind my shoulder blades and along my spine whenever I contemplate taking the easy way out. It curves and slumps my shoulders in. When I take that step to try I feel empowered, I feel capable, I feel the cartilage in my teeth getting strong and my hunger boiling over.
Addressing friction in a productive way can go two ways. Taking longer term tasks, breaking it down and making it more accessible [not easier] to achieve. Or investing time in a challenge that turns out to be short term as skills and knowledge grow.
In my home I have a small but functional home gym set up. A bench, adjustable 50ib dumbbells, a 80ib sand bag, 50ib weighted vest, resistance bands, an ab roller, three yoga mats of various thicknesses and sizes and gymnastics rings for when I go outside. If I’m waking up in my own bed there is very little friction for me to get some sort of exercise in. I’m closer to the friction of the workout itself.
This is by design not circumstance.
I’ve gotten really good at Ai assisted coding. It's actually strengthened my mental model for how to build home cooked software and pipelines. But it's time for me to learn a new, more complicated coding language the traditional way. The monsters I work with and want to work require these skills from me. I’m in training but having used a tool that reduces friction for so long I see my impatience. I see the future where the traditional skills aren’t necessary but the systems understand it. So I have to be decisive about the amount of time I spend in the old guard and the friction of developing something new. I have to know why I’m engaging the friction so I don’t slow myself down or make things harder just because. What is the purpose/goal/right timing?
I want to build fast. But I must visualize the necessary friction that I’ll need to overcome, then I’ll more than likely build something that lasts. My vision for the future is beautiful. I see myself even stronger, smarter and wealthier. But to get there I’ll have to put in some sweat equity as well as anticipate the ways I can reduce unnecessary friction to get to the good stuff. I’ll have to focus on the goals in the face of friction. I’ll have to eat food with no flavor. Leveraging the modern tools; but if there is anything that my time working with and as an artisan reminds me it's that stitching by hand sometimes results in a stronger and more beautiful foundation. A foundation to build from and create more opportunities to engage with higher level friction for the sake of a future beauty. And developing a deeper understanding of how the accelerating technology needs to produce. Because there's no point in technologically accelerating a bad process.