When did you last do something the hard way and feel better for it? Not despite the effort. Because of it.
My answer isn't from work. It's from a dinner party I hosted. It could have been a delivery order: same people, same table, one tap and it's at the door. Instead we chose to slow down and cook together, and what I learnt was that when we choose the hard way, we become more attached. It made me want to challenge something I think we've all quietly accepted.
We've been told the best experience is frictionless. Remove the steps, remove the effort. And for twenty years, businesses have done exactly that. But not all friction is the enemy. The considered, intentional kind makes an experience better, and I think we've been too quick to get rid of it.
Psychologists call it effort justification. A suit made for you feels different to one that arrived in two days. Same outfit, different meaning, because we value things more when they took effort. Ours, or someone else's. It's also why our guard goes up when something takes no effort at all. The Instagram account promising ten thousand a month for signing up to a course sets off our scam detector precisely because the frictionless promise is the suspicious part.
Effort creates value. Think about a degree: years of work, late nights, and stress for a piece of paper. Handed to you on day one, it would be worth little, to you or to anyone else. What it really represents is the investment behind it.
Effort also creates attachment. My puppy Bear and I put in three months of hard work together. Countless accidents on the carpet, endless training for both of us, and some of the best cuddles too. A goldfish would have been easier. Bear wins every time, because when we remove the struggle, we remove the attachment.
Brands that understand this are easy to spot. Luxury has known it forever. The queue outside Louis Vuitton, the unhurried staff, the packaging that takes three layers to open. None of it is accidental. It says: this is not a commodity, so don't treat it like one. Limited releases do the same thing differently. Sneakers, video game drops, Labubus. Scarcity didn't deter people, it multiplied them, and the effort to get one became part of what it meant to have one.
Even the most unglamorous friction can build trust. Two-factor authentication is annoying, it interrupts, it adds steps. But imagine your bank simply letting you in with no code and no check. Easier, yes, and alarming. That extra step is proof someone is protecting you. The inconvenience is the reassurance.
So what do a Louis Vuitton queue, a Labubu drop, and two-factor authentication have in common? Nobody engineered the friction out. They engineered it in, and every time, trust showed up in its place.
None of this is really about commerce, though. There are moments we've refused to let go of: weddings, graduations, funerals. When we tried to digitise them, something felt off, even if people couldn't name it. Some moments need weight and presence. You can't set the table over Zoom. Meanwhile, we have more connections than ever, yet the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare flags loneliness as a growing national health concern. Connection without effort is just proximity.
The implication for brands is a different question to the one most experience teams are asking. Instead of hunting for more friction to remove, ask which friction is doing work. Strip out confusion and bureaucracy. But before you remove the wait, the ritual, the participation, or the human moment, check what it's holding up. It might be the trust.
Everything that matters to you cost you something, and that's exactly why it means something. Next time the easier option appears, it's worth asking whether it's worth it.
By Perri Moustoukis, Senior Consultant, Nature
