The Loss of Positive Friction

Constraints in product work can hinder progress while also improving the result. A slow contractor may frustrate a homeowner, yet the delay creates time to reconsider plans, costs, and how the space will be used. Similarly, familiar workplace rituals - project proposals, team pairing, and multiple rounds of document review - can feel cumbersome, but they also prompt reflection, expose alternatives, and bring more people’s judgment to bear. Removing a bottleneck therefore does not simply eliminate waste: it may also remove a useful pause or collaboration mechanism that was hidden inside the inconvenience.

AI-assisted workflows make this tradeoff especially urgent. A customer conversation can now be transcribed and followed quickly by deployed code, bypassing tickets, lengthy specifications, and demos. But the discussions those steps enabled could help a team test whether a request is worthwhile, clarify what a customer meant, assess whether a design will hold up, and catch misunderstandings. When individuals work rapidly in personal AI-powered systems, there is less patience for these checks and less incentive to collaborate. The argument is not to preserve every slow process, but to deliberately create space for the questions, reflection, and shared scrutiny that improve decisions - even when faster, more satisfying tools make working alone seem preferable.