Most of us have handed over dozens of small daily tasks to our phones without really thinking about it.
Why wouldn’t you? GPS is faster than a map, online shopping beats a car park, and nobody’s missed queuing at a bank. It all made sense at the time, and in a lot of ways it still does. However, something’s been slowly but surely happening in the background. When everything runs on autopilot, your brain does too, and researchers are starting to make a pretty convincing case that this is costing us more than we realise in focus, in memory, and in how we actually feel day to day.
There’s a word for choosing the harder option on purpose.
Sociologist Kathryn Jezer-Morton came up with the term “friction-maxxing” to describe what some people are doing in response: deliberately picking the slower, more effortful way of doing things instead of letting an app handle it. Write the list by hand. Cook from the recipe card. Pay with cash. Navigate without your phone telling you where to turn.
It sounds a bit contrarian when you put it like that, but the reasoning is pretty simple. Clinical psychologist Debra Kissen says that when life is too frictionless, your brain basically goes on standby. It stops being challenged, and you start to notice that in ways that aren’t great. You’re less sharp, less focused, and it’s harder to concentrate on things that actually matter.
What actually happens when your brain has to work?
When you do something that requires real attention—think working out a route in your head, cooking something from scratch, or doing mental arithmetic—your brain forms new connections. Health researcher Marc Milstein compares it to making deposits in a bank account. The more you put in, the less you feel the withdrawals that come naturally with getting older.
Tap through enough of your daily life on a screen, and you’re skipping those deposits entirely. It’s not dramatic in a single day, but it adds up. The brain is genuinely responsive to what you ask of it. Use it more, and it stays sharper, ask very little of it, and it adjusts to that instead.
It does something for your mood too, not just your memory.
One study from George Mason University found that older adults who spent just 30 minutes a day writing by hand, reading aloud, and doing basic maths felt sharper, scored better on cognitive tests, and felt less isolated. Not 30 minutes of intense brain training — just simple, focused, effortful activity done consistently.
There’s also something about having your attention genuinely occupied that keeps anxiety quieter. When you’re actually absorbed in something—as in really absorbed, not half-watching something while scrolling—there’s less room for worried thoughts to rattle around. It’s why things like running, drawing, or even washing up by hand can feel unexpectedly settling. Your mind has somewhere to be.
Finishing something hard feels so much better.
There’s a real difference between the feeling you get after completing something that cost you effort and the feeling you get after a few hours of passive consumption. Most people know this instinctively, even if they can’t quite articulate it. An evening spent making something, fixing something, or learning something tends to feel more satisfying than the same amount of time spent scrolling, and it lingers longer too.
Effort makes people more intentional. When something takes work, you’re more present with it, and you get more out of it as a result. The easy option isn’t always the one that leaves you feeling good afterwards, and friction-maxxing is really just a slightly clunky name for noticing that gap and doing something about it.
Easy things to try if you want to start
It doesn’t need to be a lifestyle overhaul. The point is just swapping out a few things you currently do on autopilot for versions that actually require you to be there. Pay cash for your next few purchases. Write your shopping list on paper. Cook something from a recipe you have to read, rather than a video you half-watch. Try getting somewhere on foot using your own sense of direction.
Jigsaw puzzles, knitting, baking, and gardening all counts, as long as it actually holds your attention and can’t really be done while you’re distracted by something else. You’re not trying to make life miserable, just real enough that your brain has to participate. Most people find that once they start, it’s not the hardship they expected.
Something else changes too, beyond the brain health side of it.
People who start doing more things the slow way often find their relationship with time changes a bit. An evening where you actually made or did something tends to feel longer and fuller than one that just disappeared into a screen. That’s not a fluke. When your brain is properly engaged, it lays down more memories, and more memories makes time feel like it actually happened.
There’s also a quiet confidence that builds when you’re genuinely capable of things. Knowing how to read a map, cook a meal without instructions, or fix something small without a tutorial might seem trivial, but it adds up to feeling less dependent and more like yourself. That’s not nothing, and it’s probably worth more than most productivity advice you’ll read this year.
Nobody’s saying delete your apps and go off-grid.
Technology is genuinely useful, and nobody serious is suggesting otherwise. The issue isn’t your phone existing, it’s when ease becomes the unthinking default for literally everything, and you end up drifting through your days without your brain really having to show up at any point. Most people who think about it honestly will recognise at least some of that in themselves.
You don’t need a programme or a plan. Just occasionally pick the option that asks a bit more of you, and then notice how it actually feels compared to the frictionless version. That’s really all friction-maxxing is, and when you strip away the buzzword, it’s hard to argue with the logic.
