Friction-maxxing: why 2026 is embracing inconvenience to feel more human

Paying with cash instead of a card. Using a flip-phone instead of a smartphone. Expressing your true opinion, even if it causes tension. Welcome to the new trend of friction-maxxing that’s catalyzing what it means to be human in 2026.

Not everyone is comfortable with friction. And whether that’s a generational or personality quirk is another matter. The social commentators on The Social CTV asked if we “are entering the era of freedom-maxxing” (turning up the discomfort and building tolerance for inconvenience).

The guests on the show discussed a range of situations, from navigation when you’re lost without a smartphone and no coordinates to help you, to knowing how to do laundry, to facing the tension with your partner in the kitchen.

Significantly, one of the disclaimers by a guest was that those born before 1990 are already predisposed to stress, and resilience is a natural state of being.

Taking the example of tension faced in the kitchen, there’s a clear benefit to feeling the heat there and then, instead of asking a chatbot to reflect on the situation afterwards.

In this edition of Brooding, Kathryn Jezer-Morton argues that in, the face of technologies that sell us escapism at every turn, we need to build up tolerance for “inconvenience’ and start friction-maxxing. https://t.co/ziGg514PbV
undefined The Cut (@TheCut) January 3, 2026

Brain food

There’s also the cognitive benefit of predicting and working towards a reward, which could, of course, have a multitude of low, mid, and high-stakes situations.

As a society, we’ve spent a couple of decades letting algorithms dictate our behavior in everything from what we read to measuring precisely how stressed we become.

One of the mothers on the show mentioned that, after doing her daughter's hair, she realized that anything she thinks her daughter can do herself, she should do herself.

Also, one of the guests discussed that she wanted to friction-max her opinions, but that she’d let ChatGPT continue to help her with soup recipes.

How to hit the ground running

As laziness and convenience go hand in hand, there are some immediate ways to apply healthy friction into everyday life. In terms of writing, it feels like a lot of our correspondence with one another is flat and lifeless.

One effective way is to write an email from scratch with no assistance from AI. It might cause inner friction, but aside from being good practice (which counts), the task will be done genuinely.

Another good habit is to sit with uncertainty for a bit. Like a strike against a predictive life – if you can’t remember the actor from the film, perhaps trying to work it out will load the spinner in your mind.

Then there’s something like struggling with something you don’t understand. I looked at a diagram of the nervous system the other day, and it looked complicated, so I took an AI shortcut to summarize it.

I felt like a klutz, as I’d missed the tussle of trying to figure out something new, especially when that’s a friction-based biological system.