Can 'friction-maxxing' fix your focus?

With technology offering instant gratification and quick thrills, experts explain how adding friction to our day-to-day can help heal our attention span and deepen our sense of self.

In 2022, Stuart Semple was struggling with a common phenomenon: he couldn't focus. A 45-year-old artist living in Bournemouth, in the UK, Semple found himself unable to paint for more than a half-hour without reaching for his phone and its infinite distractions.

While modern technology can streamline day-to-day life, making everything from dating to food delivery more efficient, it may come at a cost: early data suggests that our attention span may be shortening, critical thinking capabilities weakening, emotional intelligence fading, and spatial memory getting worse as we offload human tasks to our devices. The technological optimisation doesn't seem to be making us happier, either: despite the continual digital assists and enhanced communication of social networks, people still report high levels of stress and loneliness.

That's why a growing number of people are restoring to the hottest new trend: "friction-maxxing", or rebuilding tolerance for inconveniences. The idea is to find tasks or ways of doing things involve a level of difficulty, time or patience. This could, for example, involve going "old school" and swapping digital tech tools for analogue solutions, such as reading rather than watching YouTube, navigating by road signs in place of Google Maps or calling a friend for advice instead of consulting ChatGPT.

Three years ago, Semple began by simply taking technology breaks and locking his phone away. "I wanted to build my muscle for being able to sit in discomfort or even experience boredom to connect with creativity," he says. "I'm getting some of the best ideas I've had for years."

Thrilled by his initial success, the artist has now traded the instant gratification of Instagram for longer and more meaningful interactions on Substack, takeaways for home-cooked meals and emails for handwritten letters.

"I find the rewards for doing difficult things are absolutely massive," says Semple. "I grow, I get better at things and I expand."

Semple and others may be onto something. According to some of the leading experts on the psychology of technology, there is an upside to inconvenience – if it's harnessed correctly. Strategically adding friction back into our lives by reducing our reliance on technology can retrain our brains for better focus, cultivate resilience and create a positive sense of autonomy.

"We have been letting technology take control of our behaviour," says Larry Rosen, a research psychologist and professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills in the US, and author of the 2016 book The Distracted Mind. "We have to take back control of ourselves."

Do our attention spans really need healing?

Awake and asleep, the brain's attention system hums with activity. When attention is internally directed, toward your emotions, memories and thoughts, the brain's default mode network is activated. When it's attuned to the outside world toward what you see, smell, hear, taste, touch and perceive in the environment around you, the brain's frontoparietal attention network is involved instead. Sometimes attention works automatically, like the way a loud noise might instinctually whip your focus into one direction, while other times it's voluntary, like the concentrated effort you're making to read this article.

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According to one band of experts, the features of our digitised existence – constant notifications, 24-hour news and endless social feeds – can hijack this attention system, resulting in cognitive overload, mental fatigue and trouble focusing.

Attention span has undergone an "alarming and shocking" decline over the last two decades, says Gloria Mark, a psychologist who studies human-computer interaction at the University of California, Irvine, in the US, and author of the 2023 book, Attention Span.

Using stopwatches and specialised tracking software, Mark and other researchers have spent years documenting our collective attention span. In these experiments, primarily on office workers, college students, and software developers, Mark and her team tracked how people went about their work or school days, completing projects and using common tools like email, Microsoft Word and internet searches. Taken together, these results estimate that the average attention span on a screen has dropped from about two and a half minutes in 2004 to 47 seconds in 2016. The difference is evident even after you account for slight methodological variations between the studies, says Mark.

This dwindling focus suggests we're multitasking more frequently, which can cause unintended side effects: people almost always take longer to complete a task and make more errors when switching than when going one by one.

"A lot of people argue that productivity is going up as we rely on technology, but what's happening to our human capabilities?" says Mark. People appear to be losing spatial awareness due to GPS overuse, social intelligence due to fewer face-to-face interactions, and critical reasoning due to generative AI.

With artificial intelligence, we are "mortgaging our brain out", says Rosen. "What happens when there's a problem we can't outsource or these tools are seriously wrong?"

Still, not all experts agree that technology is killing our attention spans or jeopardising our mental health.

Systematic research reviews reveal a nuanced picture: problematic social media use and excessive screen time have been tied to depression, anxiety, reduced self-esteem and attention problems, especially in young people, while the same digital tools can also facilitate connection and belonging. Artificial intelligence shows the potential to reduce mental effort and conserve cognitive resources, but it can also undercut interpersonal skills. In 2021, a series of experiments with university students revealed how offloading cognitive tasks to technology may save time and curb errors, but also interfere with memory formation.

Like technology, automobiles and vacuums made our lives easier, says Mark. The difference with artificial intelligence is that it is changing how we use our "cognitive capacities". When we over-rely on it to do tasks that we had typically done ourselves, we risk weakening our mental skills.

As it stands, scientists need more large-scale studies to understand exactly how.

Enter 'friction-maxxing'

Evolutionarily, humans are often biased to take the path of least resistance to conserve energy. So doing things the "hard way" rather than letting technology do the work for you may be uncomfortable and frustrating in the short term.

But our brains operate on a "use it or lose it" principle, says Mark. Experiments in animal models show that effortful learning keeps new neurons in the brain alive. Studies also show that cognitively-stimulating activities like learning an instrument, reading, playing games and doing puzzles can preserve cognitive function as we age.

Crucially, friction-maxxing may be a surprisingly effective repair strategy to restore focus and create meaning, says psychiatrist Srini Pillay, who wrote about using strategic non-focused time such as day-dreaming to improve daily life in the book Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try. If technology makes your life efficient, great, says Pillay. But ask yourself: "Is it making life efficient and shallow, or giving me room for depth? Am I feeling more or less connected with myself and others?"

Learning skills through trial and error accelerates mastery, says Pillay. Writing by hand before typing helps slow down thought, it deepens encoding and it personalises messages, for example. Reading primary sources instead of summaries exposes us to the original thinking with more reflection, he says.

Although scientists are still trying understand why, research suggests effort can often feel intrinsically meaningful. Brain scan studies have found that the part of the brain that processes rewards is more active when the payoff requires effort to achieve. The "Effort Paradox", as some scientists call it, has been noted in children, adults and even pigeons. In one experiment involving mice, when they had to work harder for their food, not only did they continue choosing that food over one that they hadn't worked for, but they also seemed to like how it tasted better (according to how much they licked it). 

A series of experiments on people who built out their own furniture suggests that assembling the products, despite the challenge, fulfilled the participants' core psychological need of proving that they are competent. They aptly dubbed it the "Ikea effect", after the Swedish furniture giant. In another set of experiments by the same research team, people had to assemble Ikea boxes, Lego sets and origami: the participants attributed a similar value to what they made and what professionals made and expected others to feel the same way about their creations – provided that they had personally completed its construction.

"Technology, as it stands, is leading us toward a light, 'hedonic' kind of well-being full of quick thrills and simple delights," says Mark. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but "the problem is that we're neglecting a 'eudaimonic' approach, which leads to deeper fulfilment and a longer-lasting kind of well-being", says Mark. Hedonic well-being centres on pleasure, happiness and comfort, while eudaimonic focuses on meaning and self-realisation. It often requires more effort along the way.

For Semple, there's a reward in adding some friction day to day, comparing his tactics to doses of eustress or "good stress" that motivate and energise, rather than drain you.

BBC/ Getty Images

Rosen remains unconvinced, however. Friction-maxxing is a "kitschy idea", he says, that's been around for a long time, but it isn't likely to work. "I hate to be a naysayer, but we have dug a huge hole for ourselves and that hole is replete with all of our technology," says Rosen.

'Friction-maxxing' may only be useful, Rosen suggests, if it helps people better manage their tech use as opposed to allowing tech to "control them". Even 15-minute tech breaks can cultivate a greater sense of autonomy.

Much like the research on the effects of technology on our mental capacities, the studies of digital detoxes show mixed results. Some breaks from technology lead to better mood, improved focus, lower stress and more social connectedness, while others show the opposite or null effects. One 2014 study found that restricting screen time at a five-day nature camp improved preteens' emotional and social intelligence, while another 2019 study of university students found an increase in loneliness after abstaining from social media for one week.

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But even if friction-maxxing isn't the end-all solution we've been waiting for, "it doesn't hurt", says Mark. "If people are putting in effort, it makes them more intentional and thoughtful."

Analogue hobbies such as crafting, gardening or reading – which involve friction as opposed to scrolling or streaming – can act as "active meditation", calming the mind and reducing stress. One 2024 study of more than 7,000 adults living in England found that those who engaged in crafting or the creative arts were more likely to report significantly higher life satisfaction, a greater sense that life is worthwhile and increased happiness. 

"I realised that a good life isn't an easy life," Semple says. "There's an enjoyment that you're cheated out of when you take the easy route."

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