Friction Isn’t Always Bad

Friction requires energy and can slow you down. However, it’s essential: friction keeps your car on the road; in icy conditions without any resistance, maintaining control becomes impossible.

In the typewriter era, putting something on the record took effort. You carefully typed on paper, knowing mistakes meant starting over, then delivered it to the mailroom. This process made people think through their words, organise ideas, and skip the trivial.

Email erased that effort; it removed the helpful friction. Now, every fleeting thought becomes a message. With instant messaging, Slack, and notifications, we drown in communication that never needed to be sent.

AI presents a new friction challenge. Tasks that once required serious effort such as creating presentations, writing reports, analysing data now can happen in seconds. This seems like pure benefit until you realise what we’ve lost: the pause that forced us to think.

That sharp slide deck appears instantly, so why not tweak it again and again? Three iterations later, you’ve spent an hour refining what needed simple clarity, not perfection.

The universe didn’t install friction to frustrate you; it installed friction to make you pause, consider, and choose deliberately. Some resistance improves the outcome. Some struggle strengthens the result.

Don’t aim to remove all friction from your day. Remove unhelpful friction such as bureaucracy, ineffective tools, and unclear messages. Keep the friction that brings value such as pausing before you send or the effort that leads to quality and better thinking.

Easy isn’t always better. Sometimes it just gets you to the wrong place quickly.

Friction Isn’t Always Bad

Friction requires energy and can slow you down. However, it’s essential: friction keeps your car on the road; in icy conditions without any resistance, maintaining control becomes impossible.

In the typewriter era, putting something on the record took effort. You carefully typed on paper, knowing mistakes meant starting over, then delivered it to the mailroom. This process made people think through their words, organise ideas, and skip the trivial.

Email erased that effort; it removed the helpful friction. Now, every fleeting thought becomes a message. With instant messaging, Slack, and notifications, we drown in communication that never needed to be sent.

AI presents a new friction challenge. Tasks that once required serious effort such as creating presentations, writing reports, analysing data now can happen in seconds. This seems like pure benefit until you realise what we’ve lost: the pause that forced us to think.

That sharp slide deck appears instantly, so why not tweak it again and again? Three iterations later, you’ve spent an hour refining what needed simple clarity, not perfection.

The universe didn’t install friction to frustrate you; it installed friction to make you pause, consider, and choose deliberately. Some resistance improves the outcome. Some struggle strengthens the result.

Don’t aim to remove all friction from your day. Remove unhelpful friction such as bureaucracy, ineffective tools, and unclear messages. Keep the friction that brings value such as pausing before you send or the effort that leads to quality and better thinking.

Easy isn’t always better. Sometimes it just gets you to the wrong place quickly.

Number 61: A Resourceful Mindset

Henry Ford said ‘Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.

Your mindset decides capability as much as circumstances do. Believe a problem has a solution, and you will keep searching for solutions until you find one. Believe it is impossible, and you will stop looking after the first obstacle.

This is not positive-thinking nonsense; it is observable psychology. People with resourceful mindsets ask different questions: not ‘Why is this impossible?’ but ‘How might this work?’ Not ‘We don’t have the resources’ but ‘What resources could we create or access?’

Resourcefulness finds ways. It substitutes when the ideal isn’t available. It adapts when plans fail. It improvises when following instructions isn’t possible. Obstacles don’t stop the resourceful person; obstacles become interesting problems to solve.

My favourite mindset concerns apparent failure. It’s not: it’s simply feedback.

Resourcefulness isn’t talent, it’s a chosen perspective. Choose ‘how might this work?’ over ‘this won’t work.’ That’s capability unlocked through mindset.

The other 69 Tools of Excellence here.

Before Stories, There Was Fire

Storytelling did not begin as art. It began as survival.

Fifty thousand years ago, a group of early humans gather around a fire as darkness falls. The fire is an innovative technology; it has only been around for a few hundred thousand years, not enough time to reshape the species, but enough to change everything about how humans lived.

Fire means cooked food. Fire means warmth. Fire means light after sunset, which means time. And in that time, around those fires, something extraordinary happens. Humans begin to share experiences that could not be learned individually without considerable risk. Where did danger lie? The elder described the waterhole to the north, how it looked safe, but how his brother had died there, taken by something that emerged from the reeds. Which plants were safe to eat? The woman who had foraged for thirty seasons explained the difference between two similar-looking berries: one nourishing, one deadly and told the story of the child who made the wrong choice. Who could be trusted? The hunter recounted how one member of a neighbouring group had helped him when he was injured, and how that debt had been repaid. What happened when rules were broken? The group shared the story of the man who stole from the community and the consequences.

These tales were not entertainment, though they may have entertained. They were simulations of reality. Survival information was encoded in memorable form. A story was not ‘content’ in our modern sense. It was a cognitive technology for transmitting critical wisdom. Stories were taught across the generations without requiring each person to risk their life to learn them firsthand.

My new How to Be a Storyteller is planned for release late tomorrow.

Watch your Language: banish TLAs, T-Shirt Sizing and Crisis Talk.

Talk simply, in real English.

TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms, yes, the irony) hide important matters behind jargon. Every industry has them. Tech has API, SaaS, and SDK. Business has ROI, KPI, and OKR. Education has CPD, PGCE, and QTS. And let’s not start on medicine or conversations with our financial adviser.

They serve a purpose within an expert community; it’s a shorthand which can save time when everyone shares the same context. But they become barriers when overused, new people feel excluded, and clarity suffers.

If you cannot explain it without the acronym, admit that you do not understand it well enough.

‘T-shirt sizing’ and such practices cause a similar challenge. This of course is the approach of estimating effort or complexity by assigning labels like Small, Medium, Large, XL, as if projects were garments.

Is it a cool and neat idea, or is it avoiding the rigorous work of getting precise? My own experience is too often the latter. If a project is ‘Large,’ what does that mean? Three months? Six? Ten people or two? £50,000 or £200,000?

T-shirt sizing might feel collaborative and agile, but often it is vagueness masquerading as methodology. Insist on a number; precision requires effort.

And be careful with the drama. Is it urgent or is someone hiding their poor planning? Is it really a crisis or did the Project Manager not do their job? When I am working with a client they will often remark on how much more we achieve when I am in the room. There’s no magic and it’s not complicated. That’s because I insist on an agenda, minimise the gossip and turn vagueness into precision.

Action: watch your language! Be simple (but not simplistic), concrete and drama free.

In The Pipeline

An addition to the Companion series, each of which is intended to be a fast and relevant read.

The new addition is How to Be a Storyteller for novelists, speakers and brand ambassadors. I hope to have it available on kindle later this week.

Currently in the companion series:

How to Beat ChatGPT or How Not to Lose your Job to AI; MEDS: The Powerful Daily Wellness Strategy; Do Less and Achieve More, the power of Pareto; The Tools of Excelelence: things and ideas and approaches for effecting daily brilliance.

All are available on amazon kindle: instant, budget and worldwide.