Where Is There Friction in Your Life?
a decluttering practice, but for the soul
"Where is there friction in your life?"
This was the text a girl friend sent me on a Sunday night in the midst of the dinner, bath, and bedtime routine. It caught me off guard—deep, existential questions usually didn't mix with the chaos of nightly routines.
"Ohhh, good question! Need to think. BRB."
"Let’s discuss in person. Can you do lunch this week?"
We met a few days later, for a long lunch. Over lunch, she got right back to her question: where is there friction in your life? This time she had decided to carve out time to write down absolutely everything in her life that created friction. By that, she meant anything she felt resistance toward or had negative emotions about. If it annoyed her? Friction. Frustrated her? Friction. Was it hard? Friction. All of it was going into her fresh journal.
As she shared her assignment, I realized that friction wasn’t just an abstract concept for her. She wasn’t simply seeking out minor annoyances to vent about—it was deeper. It was about the undercurrent of stress that most of us carry through life, often unaware until something forces us to confront it. The stress that seeps into our mornings when we wake up to face another list of to-dos, or when we find ourselves rushing through the day, never fully present. I started wondering about my own friction: those invisible forces that made me feel stuck or overwhelmed. Maybe her idea had more merit than I initially thought.
"So, what's the goal?" I asked, intrigued.
"I want to take everything on that list and make it a project—to either figure out how to remove it from my life entirely, or if that isn't possible, to change it or reduce some of the friction. It’s like decluttering, but for the soul."
"Love that! Sounds healthy. But what's with all the friction? Is there something you need to talk about?
She laughed, a lightness in her eyes, but there was something more behind it—maybe a relief that I’d asked. She explained how she'd been feeling weighed down by the constant hustle of her life. The endless work hours, the tension with her partner, the social pressures—it all added up to this dull but persistent friction that she had been ignoring for too long. Her recent burnout had forced her to stop and reflect.
She went on to share the inspiration which was NYU Stern Professor Adam Alter, who spent the past two decades studying how people become stuck and how they free themselves to thrive, talking about his book Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most. In his book, he discusses a "friction audit," a term that resonated with her. Alter's version of a friction audit is a systematic procedure that uncovers why a person or organization is stuck and then suggests a path to progress. The friction audit states that people and organizations get unstuck when they overcome three sources of friction: HEART (unhelpful emotions), HEAD (unhelpful patterns of thought), and HABIT (unhelpful behaviors).
“I realized that maybe I needed to do my own friction audit,” she said. “But instead of a formal procedure, it’s more like a personal deep dive. I want to look at the places in my life where I feel that friction—the little struggles and the big ones—and see if I can smooth them out. It’s not just about big life changes; it’s about all the small things too. Like, why does my life stress me out? Or why do I feel drained by certain people? I want to fix it.”
As she spoke, I found myself nodding. How often do we pause to acknowledge all the tension points in our lives? And more importantly, how often do we actively work to address them, instead of just pushing through them or, worse, ignoring them?
She was onto something and I had to share it with you! So, I leave you with this question: where is there friction in your life? And what can you do about it?
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