"Friction-maxxing "Silicon Valley Spent Billions Removing Friction. Now People Are Paying to Put It Back.

or more than a decade, the most valuable real estate in American commerce was the space between wanting something and owning it. Retailers saved your card. Phones learned your face. Delivery apps cut ordering down to a single tap.

The effort paid off. Cornell researchers found that one-click checkout increases consumer spending by 28.5%.

A growing number of consumers and workers have now decided that the effort they lost is worth getting back.

The practice is called friction-maxxing, and it means deliberately choosing the less convenient option. It began as a New Year's essay and has become one of 2026's most durable cultural ideas. It now shows up in corporate workshops, personal-finance advice and design studios, and it raises an uncomfortable question for companies whose business depends on removing every obstacle between a customer and a transaction.

The term was coined by columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton in a January essay for The Cut. She argued that tech companies have trained people to treat boredom, social awkwardness and effortful thinking as problems to be eliminated. Her answer wasn't simply to cut screen time. She called for building up tolerance for inconvenience.

The idea spread fast. Within a month, friction maxxing was the most searched "maxxing" term globally, and interest in impulse-control techniques had jumped more than 140%, according to Forbes.

AI at the office

The workplace is where the trend has gained the most traction.

The Financial Times reported in January that workers were putting friction back into their jobs: favoring in-person meetings, reading full documents instead of AI summaries and taking notes by hand. The motive is partly defensive. Gianpiero Petriglieri, a professor of organizational behavior at Insead, told the paper that his students worry convenience will stop them from developing judgment.

"A little bit like a controlling parent, it makes life easier for you," he said.

There is research behind the concern. A study by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University found that workers who trusted generative AI tools exercised less independent critical thinking.

Management advisers have been quick to turn the idea into practice. Among the steps suggested for senior leaders: slowing down key approvals to invite more perspectives, imposing a 24-hour delay on high-impact emails, and banning meetings that lack a written agenda.

The wallet

By spring, the trend had reached household budgets, where the stakes for companies are more direct.

Personal-finance guides now recommend undoing much of what retailers spent years building. They tell readers to delete saved cards from shopping and delivery apps, turn off biometric authentication for payments, wait 24 hours before buying anything over a set amount, and pay cash in categories where they overspend.

Advisers say the approach has limits. It works best in impulse categories such as food delivery and online fashion. Applied to groceries and other essentials, it mostly produces frustration.

No major platform has cited the trend as a drag on results, and there's little evidence yet that it has reached the scale of a measurable headwind. Still, for delivery apps, buy-now-pay-later lenders and any business built on conversion rates, the direction is worth watching. A growing group of customers now regards the friction those companies removed as a feature rather than a defect.

A luxury good?

Critics say the movement is less new, and less democratic, than it looks.

The Guardian called friction-maxxing a rebranding of old-fashioned character-building. It noted that people have adopted conveniences for centuries, and that drawing the line at today's technology is arbitrary.

André Spicer, executive dean of London's Bayes Business School, raised a sharper objection in the FT. He argued that choosing inconvenience is mostly a privilege of high-status workers, and that people often use friction to make a task seem harder and so gain status from it. The FT also warned that a return to in-person hiring could favor well-connected applicants.

The trend's name has its own baggage. The "-maxx" suffix comes from slang that originated in online incel communities in the mid-2010s.

Beyond software

The idea has also spread well beyond technology. Fashion editors blame algorithmic recommendations for a numbing sameness in personal style. Interior designers now use the term for deliberately pairing antiques with modern pieces to create tension in a room.

Martin Brudnizki, the designer behind Soho Beach House Miami, summed up the appeal in terms that apply well beyond decorating.

"When everything matches, you can't really see anything," he said.