By Rob Shaul
I’ve been thinking alot recently on the way friction impacts how we spend our time, our good and bad habits, and our self-image.
Distance. Inconvenience. Cost. Fatigue. Time. Pain. Responsibility. Sources of friction which resist intention, motivation, values and action. Friction doesn’t openly argue with us. It simply resists—and waits.
A friction audit can expose excuses and force alignment between intention and action.
I’ve written before that proximity is worth a lot of money. If you love surfing but live three hours from the ocean, you will surf less. Not a moral failure – but physics. Distance is friction that creates resistance, and resistance reduces action. Move closer to the beach and, without any increase in discipline or desire, you may suddenly surf more. Less friction, less resistance, more surfing.
Fitness training. If an athlete must drive across town, pack a bag, fight traffic, and navigate a crowded gym, he will likely train less than if the gym is in his garage, or at work. Less friction, more training.
Most understand this at a surface level. Where it gets interesting and informative is when you stop using friction as an excuse and start examining it.
A friction audit begins with inventory. Those things you tell yourself you want to be doing more of? Backpacking. Writing. Training. Creating. Reading. Climbing. And those things you wish you were doing less of? Scrolling. Eating junk. Drinking. Staying busy instead of intentional.
For each item, look at the friction and ask where it comes from.
Some friction is imposed. Aging. Injury. Financial responsibility. Children. Parents who need care. These can’t be optimized away. They demand acceptance and renegotiation, not resentment.
Other friction is structural. Distance. Schedule. Cost. Access. These are built into the architecture of your life. Some are chosen and others are inherited. They exert real resistance, regardless of how motivated you feel.
An inland surfer can sacrifice sleep, drive overnight, sleep in his car, and surf every weekend if he wants it badly enough. Structural friction can often be overcome—but it takes desire, committment and action.
Then there is protective friction.
Protective friction is internal resistance that shields ego. It protects you from being bad at something. From failing publicly. From discovering that something you admire in theory doesn’t survive contact with reality. Protective friction is where many of the excuses we blame live.
This is humbn, but costly. Carrying identities that aren’t backed by action creates a low-grade psychological drag. Something feels off. Dissatisfaction creeps in. Over time, this mis-alignment eats at the soul and self-worth.
Reducing friction can expose this too.
You say you want to surf every day, so you buy the beach house. You remove the distance, the time excuse, the inconvenience. And then you still don’t surf much.
That outcome isn’t failure. It’s information. What you learn is that you like the idea of being a surfer more than the daily reality of it. The realization stings—but it ends a lie. You stop carrying an identity that doesn’t fit. Gone is the psychological drag and now you are free to find what fits.
The friction audit doesn’t tell you what to do. It tells you the truth.
Friction can be added deliberately.
Removing sweets from the house so that sugar requires a trip to the store increases friction and discourages a shitty diet. Deleting social media apps resists doom scrolling. Not keeping alcohol at home decreases drinking.
As I’ve gotten older, with the wind of my own mortality more consistently in my face, I’ve become less tolerant of unexamined friction. Time is short, and ambiguity is expensive. If you’re the surfer driving overnight every weekend, the path forward is obvious—move closer to the ocean.
The friction audit is alignment. Discover which forms of resistance are imposed, structural, or protective, and which you apply deliberately.
Use the audit to align action with self worth, and clarify decisions.