The Little Things That Count

I grew up in a time when watching your favorite show required me to know when it was on, and that I had to be there. No pausing, no rewinding, no catching it up later. I wasn’t aware of what season or episode I was watching, only that I noticed that certain characters looked different after some time.

The excitement of waiting for my show to come was an experience in itself. I had something I could look forward to. In contrast, my oldest daughter, who’s three, was born into a different world. Her favorite show is always available, where she has the option to pause to do something else and then come back. She never once had to wait for it. The concept of a show being on a specific time, and you either being there or missing, doesn’t exist in her world, and she might never know that feeling.

But here’s the thing, I’m where she’s at now, and have been there long before she was born. I can find any show that I like pretty quickly. But I lost something—the excitement of not knowing what episode pops up, and that I just had to be there within a specific timeframe or else I’d miss it.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it, because it was just how things were. But now that I look back, I can see that exerting effort to watch a show that I liked as a kid, even if that meant waking early to watch it, was doing something to me. It made me value it more.

That’s what I mean by the little things that count. We value things more when effort is required as opposed to being effortless. And it isn’t just about appreciation—it’s also that we learn to be more patient, disciplined, and focused. Those small frictions add something to us that convenience silently takes away.

When I originally thought about writing the essay, the title came to me easily, but I didn’t have the language to materialize its content until I came across a newsletter that unveiled the fog inside me. It was from Tobias van Schneider, who I’ve been following for a long time. His writing has been inspiring, and in particular, this essay titled How to Reverse AI Brain Rot got me thinking. Here’s a part that stood out:

Accept some slowness and complexity in your life. Don’t use shortcuts everywhere even if they’re easily available to you. Embrace manual effort to train your mind and body. It’s the only way to grow and retain personal agency in a world where that’s no longer required.

It affirmed what I initially felt when I came up with the title. It seems like everything has to become frictionless—that if there’s a struggle, then the whole building would crumble down. And it isn’t just how we consume entertainment. When smartphones weren’t a thing, and we used to have landline phones, we would’ve to consciously remember multiple numbers. Now that that isn’t necessary, I only know my own and can barely recall my wife’s, which I find embarrassing.

Now that we have AI, the possibilities of automating and organizing our lives with it are many, maybe too many, since it feels like every week a new model or tool pops out. And like everybody else, I got on the hype train. I mean, you couldn’t scroll anywhere without seeing a video or article about it. I have nothing against it - I use AI tools in my own workflow, and I tried to find a balance where it feels right.

In the beginning, when I was using AI, I relied on it too much, to the point of letting it think and write for me. In that process, I couldn’t recognize my writing - everything sounded so robotic, so not me, using words I would never use. I thought I was saving time, but in reality, I was handing out the fun stuff of the writing process, coming up with a messy first draft, and wrestling with ideas and words. What I did was welcome back that manual effort so that I could feel a sense of ownership.

Removing friction in its entirety is robbing yourself of personal growth. Think about learning a new skill that you’re excited about. You’d go and find material, whether in books and videos to go through, and along the learning curve, you will encounter a dip. The excitement is gone because you’re met with a problem you don’t understand and can’t bypass. Most people would quit because the friction isn’t worth it. But if you stick around long enough, things will start to click, and you’ll likely have solved the problem and levelled up.

When I feel things are speeding up and I can’t keep up with it, I’m trying to dial down by adding friction that slows me down.

I write a lot online, so I also switch it up with writing by hand. It’s slower, messier, but surprisingly flexible because I can draw lines, diagrams, or box in ideas without being constricted by a software. And instead of just saving visual inspiration from the internet, which is faster, I go outside and take pictures of stuff I find interesting. When I’m reading online, I find it easy to overconsume. But reading a book, now that’s different. It’s slow. It requires my attention, and willingness to stay with the author’s thinking longer, or if it’s fiction, the story itself.

Not everything has to be void of friction or be convenient. I’m not against it. What I do notice is that when I’ve put effort into something, I value it more and become appreciative of it. Those are the things that make the most memorable moments in my life.