What do you think?
Rate this book
Friction: Why we're paying twice for modern life
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 19, 2026
I finished Friction by Eliot Mannoia with the slightly uncomfortable feeling that the book had been watching my life.
As someone who grew up digital, works across countries, and runs an NGO, I live in a world where almost everything can be made faster, easier and more efficient.
Communication is instant and Information is abundant. AI can remove entire layers of like optimise our calendars, our sleep, our travel, our businesses, basically almost everything.
And yet Friction asks a much more interesting question than whether technology is making our lives better:
What are we losing when everything becomes easier?
That question stayed with me.
Mannoia's central idea is that we have spent years engineering friction out of everyday life, only to discover that some of the things we removed ( like effort, waiting, uncertainty, boredom, physical engagement, detours, even inconvenience) were doing something quite important for us. They were giving us opportunities to think, notice, adapt, connect and simply be human.
What I particularly appreciated is that this isn't another anti-tech argument. The book doesn't tell us to disconnect, reject AI or romanticise the past. Rather, it asks us to become more intentional about where technology should remove friction and where friction is actually valuable or where it gives us a sense of belonging and grounding.
That distinction feels incredibly relevant when you work digitally and internationally.
The ideas are also surprisingly practical. Artificial Hardship, Creating Contrast and The Human Curve give you language for things you can actually experiment with such as taking the stairs, choosing the slower route, creating moments without optimisation, allowing boredom, having conversations that don't have an agenda, or resisting the impulse to automate every small inconvenience.
But the part I found most valuable is the deeper question underneath all of this. If we keep designing life to behave like software, what happens to the parts of us that don't?
Judgement isn't always efficient. Creativity rarely follows a straight line. Relationships cannot be optimised like workflows. Good leadership sometimes requires sitting with ambiguity rather than immediately looking for the answer. And some of the most meaningful moments in life happen precisely because something didn't go according to plan.
As a founder, that made the book particularly relevant to me. We spend so much time trying to remove friction from organisations ( rightly so when that friction is pointless). However, perhaps the goal isn't a frictionless company or a frictionless life. Perhaps the goal is knowing which friction is waste, and which friction is formative.
That is a much more interesting way to think about technology, AI and the future of work.
Friction left me not wanting less technology, but wanting to use it more consciously.
To automate what should be automated and accelerate what genuinely benefits from speed. I want to protect the slow, difficult, messy, embodied and deeply human things that shouldn't be optimised away. In a world increasingly designed around convenience, I think that is a conversation worth having.
A thoughtful, practical and slightly unsettling book but in the best possible way.
As someone who grew up digital, works across countries, and runs an NGO, I live in a world where almost everything can be made faster, easier and more efficient.
Communication is instant and Information is abundant. AI can remove entire layers of like optimise our calendars, our sleep, our travel, our businesses, basically almost everything.
And yet Friction asks a much more interesting question than whether technology is making our lives better:
What are we losing when everything becomes easier?
That question stayed with me.
Mannoia's central idea is that we have spent years engineering friction out of everyday life, only to discover that some of the things we removed ( like effort, waiting, uncertainty, boredom, physical engagement, detours, even inconvenience) were doing something quite important for us. They were giving us opportunities to think, notice, adapt, connect and simply be human.
What I particularly appreciated is that this isn't another anti-tech argument. The book doesn't tell us to disconnect, reject AI or romanticise the past. Rather, it asks us to become more intentional about where technology should remove friction and where friction is actually valuable or where it gives us a sense of belonging and grounding.
That distinction feels incredibly relevant when you work digitally and internationally.
The ideas are also surprisingly practical. Artificial Hardship, Creating Contrast and The Human Curve give you language for things you can actually experiment with such as taking the stairs, choosing the slower route, creating moments without optimisation, allowing boredom, having conversations that don't have an agenda, or resisting the impulse to automate every small inconvenience.
But the part I found most valuable is the deeper question underneath all of this. If we keep designing life to behave like software, what happens to the parts of us that don't?
Judgement isn't always efficient. Creativity rarely follows a straight line. Relationships cannot be optimised like workflows. Good leadership sometimes requires sitting with ambiguity rather than immediately looking for the answer. And some of the most meaningful moments in life happen precisely because something didn't go according to plan.
As a founder, that made the book particularly relevant to me. We spend so much time trying to remove friction from organisations ( rightly so when that friction is pointless). However, perhaps the goal isn't a frictionless company or a frictionless life. Perhaps the goal is knowing which friction is waste, and which friction is formative.
That is a much more interesting way to think about technology, AI and the future of work.
Friction left me not wanting less technology, but wanting to use it more consciously.
To automate what should be automated and accelerate what genuinely benefits from speed. I want to protect the slow, difficult, messy, embodied and deeply human things that shouldn't be optimised away. In a world increasingly designed around convenience, I think that is a conversation worth having.
A thoughtful, practical and slightly unsettling book but in the best possible way.
June 20, 2026
A book everyone can benefit from.
This book helped me put AI in perspective. It has value for professionals, families and communities. I highly recommend it for everyone.
This book helped me put AI in perspective. It has value for professionals, families and communities. I highly recommend it for everyone.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews