In a world of instant everything, friction-maxxing shows how embracing small challenges can restore focus and presence while cultivating self-development.
If you told someone in the early 2000s that you could have an entire school paper or corporate-sounding email written by artificial intelligence, they’d probably laugh in disbelief. Yet today, we live in an era of hyper-convenience, where nearly everything is just a tap or click away. But this ease raises an uncomfortable question: is hyper-convenience making us… dumb? This was the thought that led me to Mina Le’s video essay on friction-maxxing.
In it, the content creator revisits what it means to “be smarter,” reflecting on how reshaping her media consumption, rethinking the way she navigates the internet, and approaching new experiences with more purpose reintroduced a sense of friction into her daily life. The shift, as she describes it, was both stimulating and slightly uncomfortable, forcing her brain to engage rather than passively absorb whatever appeared on her screen. The idea immediately piqued my interest. And, true to form, the curiosity spiraled into a familiar rabbit hole; here’s what I found.
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What Is Friction-maxxing?
Friction-maxxing is a very recent term that was coined by Kathryn Jezer-Morton in The Cut. It describes the deliberate act of adding back the very inconveniences modern life has worked hard to erase (“maximizing” the friction, so to speak). These include small doses of difficulty and manual effort, because while inconvenient, their very existence does restore a sense of agency many of us have lost in a world obsessed with ease.
Friction-maxxing is basically the sibling of looksmaxxing—another internet neologism referring to the obsession of optimizing your physical appearance, except instead of sculpting your jawline or contouring your cheekbones, you’re putting in the effort of…well, reintroducing effort into your life. This isn’t about asceticism or living like a monk. In some way, it’s mainly a return to life before AI took over everything, which in itself, is a wake-up call indicating just how much has changed, and not necessarily for the better. It’s about tolerance for inconvenience, about making peace with slowness and discomfort in a world that tends to eliminate both.
Friction-maxxing revolves around three ideas. First, intentionality: choosing the analog over the digital, not because it’s inherently “better,” but because it demands more from you. Second, presence: letting friction pull you fully into whatever task is in front of you, forcing your brain to engage rather than check out. And finally, resilience: building the mental equivalent of calluses, so you can function when technology fails or shortcuts vanish. Try making a grocery list without any AI aid, or do some good old fashioned research in a library rather than typing a one liner question into that ChatGPT text box. When you think about it, friction-maxxing is a philosophy about rebuilding parts of ourselves that convenience has eroded over time, one that finds its roots in the works of ancient thinkers.
Life Is Hard, And That’s Okay (In Fact, It’s Necessary)
Friction-maxxing isn’t exactly a modern concept, even if its name is a recent invention. Both Aristotle and Confucius penned philosophies with a similar thesis: that human flourishing isn’t handed to you, and instead requires the cultivation of virtues through experience. And that “experience” is often messy and uncomfortable (such is life). Learning by doing, by struggling, by trying, is how one builds character and widens their capacity for growth. Instead of asking an AI platform for the “best thing to say” to a friend or partner during conflicts, pause and think it through yourself, then say it. You might get it wrong, but that’s part of the exercise. The value lies in the learning experience, which involves setting things on your own terms, guided by your own thoughts and ways of processing interactions.
Friction-maxxing shows up in all parts of life: sending that important (or not so important) email, letting your kids make their own mistakes while doing homework, creating special kitchen recipes (and failing). These minor inconveniences aren’t solely annoyances; remember, the term “growing pains” has the word “growing” for a reason. I’m not recommending to seek out suffering for suffering’s sake, but rather, to ride the waves of process even when they get choppy. Ironically, that’s the easiest thing you can do for yourself when you want to fully engage with life rather than skim it.
