TL;DR
Our brains love shortcuts. And with AI offering us an increasingly convenient escape route from cognitive effort, it's worth asking: Are we making ourselves more productive, or are we making ourselves a little too comfortable?
I recently attended the NeuroLeadership Summit, where one concept really stuck with me: useful friction. Turns out, some of the mental effort we're so eager to eliminate is exactly what helps us develop better judgment, sharpen our thinking, and get smarter.
So, maybe the easy button isn't always the answer.
Two Comms Pros Walk Up a Mountain...
Two comms professionals on a quest for knowledge seek the wisdom of a guru on a mountaintop.
One says, “Hey, I'm a bit tight on time. I'll just take the ski lift up.”
The other says, “I'm going to take the hiking path. It'll give me some time to bask in nature and reflect on what I want to ask the guru.”
Both make it to the top. Both meet with the guru. Objective achieved. But they had very different journeys.
The one who took the ski lift had a much easier time. No sweat, no blistered toes, no sunburn. Minimal effort.
The other had to work a little harder. Along the way, they had time to think, reflect, and maybe even come up with better questions for the guru.
Was the hike necessarily better? Not if the only objective was getting to the top. But if the journey itself helped prepare them for the conversation, that extra effort had value.
That's what's known as useful friction.
Our Brains Love the Easy Button
This past month, I had the opportunity to attend the NeuroLeadership Summit, hosted by the NeuroLeadership Institute (NLI). And boy, was it fascinating. One topic that really captured my attention was useful friction, particularly in this era of AI.
Our brains love shortcuts. If there's a cognitive version of the easy button, our brains want it. That's one of the reasons we love AI so much. As Dr. David Rock, co-founder of NLI, puts it, AI is like fast food for the brain. Yes, it keeps us going, but there can be hidden costs.
Enter useful friction.
Friction is simply an obstacle. But the useful variety can actually improve our decision-making, judgment, and self-control. NLI breaks useful friction down into four types:
Articulating: Putting our thoughts into words helps us figure out what we actually think.
Contesting: Questioning, challenging, and exploring alternatives keeps us from accepting the first answer that comes along.
Developmental practice: Trying, getting feedback, and trying again helps us build skills and better judgment.
Aligning: Working through differences helps create shared understanding and commitment.
In other words, friction can be a catalyst for thinking about our own thinking. A practice that can be in short supply when we're increasingly outsourcing that thinking to AI.
And here's what I find particularly interesting for those of us in communications. We're so focused on what AI helps us produce that we don't always consider what the process of producing it does for us.
Writing a difficult message isn't just about getting the words on the page. It's about figuring out what we actually want to say, anticipating how an audience might respond, weighing competing priorities, and deciding what matters most. Sometimes, struggling through that first draft is how we figure out what we think in the first place.
AI can get us to the finished product faster. But what are we potentially missing along the way?
Have We Gotten a Little Too Comfortable?
With AI assistants popping up on practically every device, that cognitive escape route is always just a click away. Am I guilty of opting for convenience? Absolutely.
When it's been a long week and my brain's fried, I will 100% say yes to alleviating my cognitive burden. AI, write that compelling subject line. Help me meal plan for the week. Give me some ideas for a weekend getaway. Tell me how to politely say, “This meeting could have been an email.”
I'm not about to pretend I don't appreciate having a digital assistant at my beck and call. But what happens when convenience becomes our default?
When we stop wrestling with ideas because AI can generate ten of them in seconds? When we stop challenging assumptions because the first AI-generated recommendation sounds perfectly reasonable? When we stop practicing skills because, well, why bother?
The concern isn't that AI makes things easier. That's kind of the point. It's that we might be eliminating the very friction that helps us get better.
Think of a knife. Without regular sharpening, the edge gets dull. Our cognitive skills need practice, too. And if we're constantly handing off the work that keeps them sharp, we may find those skills aren't quite as sharp when we actually need them.
Which brings me to a slightly uncomfortable personal realization.
Whatever Happened to That Smart Girl?
My parents recently had some trees trimmed at their house. Turns out, the guy doing the work was someone I graduated high school with. When he realized whose parents they were, he said, “Oh, I remember Emily. She was that tall, really, really smart girl.”
First of all, thank you. I'll take it.
But it also got me thinking. Am I still that “really, really smart” girl?
Not that I've suddenly become an idiot. But after years of doing work that hasn't always stretched my brain, and now having AI ready to do some of the heavy lifting, I wonder if I'm giving myself enough opportunities to actually think hard anymore.
When I was going through my journalism undergrad almost 15 years ago, there was no ChatGPT waiting patiently for my next prompt. It was just me and my brain struggling to write a compelling headline (which I'm still rubbish at), deciding which source quotes were most compelling, and figuring out how to respond to the latest campus critic of my op-ed.
Was it frustrating sometimes? Absolutely. But all that wrestling with words, ideas, and opposing perspectives was doing something beyond helping me finish an assignment. It was teaching me how to think.
And I wonder if I've gotten a little too accustomed to letting something else do parts of that work for me.
Maybe the question isn't whether I've gotten less smart. Maybe it's whether I've gotten a little too comfortable.
Take the Hiking Path Once in a While
So, here's my challenge to you this week: Take an AI sabbatical for a day. Maybe two, if you're feeling particularly ambitious.
Write something from scratch. Wrestle with a problem before asking AI to solve it. Come up with your own ideas before inviting your digital assistant to the brainstorming session.
Your brain will probably protest. It knows there's an easier way, and it would very much like you to take it. But see what happens when you don't.
I'm certainly not suggesting we abandon AI. That ship has sailed.
The point isn't to make everything harder for the sake of it. Some friction is just friction. Nobody's becoming a better thinker because they spent 45 minutes manually formatting a spreadsheet.
The trick is recognizing which obstacles are worth removing and which ones are actually helping us grow.
Because in our quest to make everything faster, easier, and more efficient, I wonder if we're forgetting that sometimes the hard part is the part that makes us better.
Maybe we should take the hiking path every once in a while.
