Are we making life better, or just easier?

Recently, I travelled to Auckland for work.

Early in the morning, I kissed my partner goodbye, climbed into a car, passed through the airport gates, boarded a plane, landed in Auckland, cleared immigration, checked into my hotel and opened my room with an electronic key.

Everything had gone smoothly and yet I felt sad.

I had travelled from my front door in Melbourne to a hotel room in another country without any meaningful human contact.

I began to wonder whether, in pursuit of frictionless experiences, we might be removing the experiences themselves.

That Auckland trip led me to the idea of ‘friction maxxing‘, a term coined by writer Kathryn Jezer-Morton: deliberately choosing small inconveniences rather than automatically taking the easiest possible route.

Phoning instead of texting (gasp). Talking to the Uber driver, even when neither of you feels like making the first move.

This isn’t an argument for making life pointlessly difficult. I’m not about to churn my own butter or swim to Auckland.

But efficiency is not the only measure of a good life. I know you never thought you would hear an Economist say that.

Friction maxxing is exactly what my brilliant friend Simon Waller, Futurist and speaker, and I get into in the latest episode of ‘The Future With Friends’.

It’s a joyful conversation with plenty of laughs, but underneath it sits a question I haven’t been able to shake since that lonely hotel room in Auckland.

Simon captures it so well:

‘Are we making life better, or just easier?’

Watch or listen on Spotify or YouTube, or via this link.