Friction

Friction is not a bug. Friction is the mechanism by which we build understanding. Every shortcut you take through a problem is a piece of understanding you didn’t build. And understanding compounds. The person who struggled through debugging for years sees patterns that the person who always asked AI simply cannot see.

My friend Stu Crocker once said something that stuck with me deeply: “Quality is the absence of unnecessary friction.” I love that and made it my mantra. But the key word is “unnecessary.” Not all friction is bad. Some friction is the price of admission. It’s on us to learn to tell the difference between the friction we should eliminate and the friction we need to push through. No pain, no gain, as they say. And right now, too many people are removing all the friction, including the kind that makes them grow.