I’ve been thinking a lot about technology lately.
And about our seemingly endless quest to reduce friction, to eliminate inconvenience.
I love gadgets. I’m a sucker for new software that promises to save me the time and the bandwidth to do the work that is most important to me: the writing, the thinking. The deep, interesting conversations about creative process that I’m lucky to have with my coaching clients.
But with AI, the tech bros are proposing outsourcing that work too. Apparently we don’t need to write or think any more, because the machines will do it for us. We no longer need friends, mentors, coaches, even lovers, because we now have bots.
Soon we won’t have to work, either. (Though it’s not at all clear how we’ll pay the bills, in this brave new world.)
A lot of this is hype.
It’s interesting how often big announcements about AI and what it will soon be able to do coincide with a tech company’s latest fund-raising round.
AI is astonishing (and worrying). But it’s never going to empty my bins, repair my cracked bathroom sink, replace the carers who help with my elderly mum, make the new custom bookcases I’m hankering for, tell new stories, or introduce new ways of thinking or being.
There are still plenty of jobs – especially in creative fields – that only humans can do with any degree of emotion or originality.
But even when technology does reduce friction in our lives, it’s worth examining what all this convenience is costing us.
Friction rarely disappears completely.
It just moves, becomes invisible. Your convenient door-to-door delivery is facilitated by an army of low-paid gig-economy workers with no job security and few rights.
The AI that saves you time was trained by stealing the work of other creators, and is powered by huge data centres that create few jobs, but consume terrifying amounts of power and water.
Even as we focus ever more on the digital world, many of us also have an uneasy feeling that the real world is falling apart: potholes in the roads, communities fracturing, overworked and stressed-out humans, problems with burnout and mental health.
We’re being force-fed convenience until it kills us.
The messages are subtle, but always present.
- Reading is boring. Get the summary of the book instead.
- Shopping is tedious. Just click, and get it delivered.
- Cooking is messy and time-consuming. Get a ready-meal, a takeaway, some processed food.
- Stop networking to find clients, or building relationships with your audience, your fans. Social media is quicker and easier.
- Socialising is expensive. Why not scroll or stream instead?
- Talking is awkward. So text and message.
- Friendships, relationships can be hard work. But a chatbot will always agree with you.
- Thinking is hard. So outsource it to AI.
This path will gradually turn us into the humans in the prescient 2008 Pixar film, Wall-E: bloated, passive adult babies parked in front of screens and being fed by machines.
I’m not saying we should avoid everything convenient.
I’ve no desire to carry my laundry down to a river, and start bashing at it with stones. (Especially not given the state of most British rivers.)
We all have times when a quick ready-meal or a takeaway is exactly what we need. Or when the cakes you contribute to the school bake sale were made by Aldi.
I don’t drive and I live a 60-minute train or bus ride from my nearest city centre. So of course I’ll order 24-hour delivery if I need something urgently, and I can’t buy it locally.
And if social media still works for you – that’s brilliant! Do carry on.
This isn’t about judging anyone for their choices. Or about doing everything the hard way. But it is about making an effort, sometimes, to do things the more satisfying way. To create space for awe and wonder. For the random coincidences that can happen when you look away from screens or take the long way round.
Make room for the world to surprise and delight you.
And it often will, if you choose the less convenient route.
- You decide not to order that book you need from Amazon, and go to your local bookshop instead. You find the book you want, but also discover two more titles that will be useful. On the way home, you bump into a friend you’ve been meaning to call, and arrange a coffee for later in the week.
- You feel bored, tired, antsy. But instead of reaching for your phone and scrolling, you go out for a walk. You notice that there is blossom everywhere, and the trees are all wearing their brightest, freshest shades of green. It’s a cold, grey day, but you suddenly feel that summer is round the corner.
- You’re about to sink in front of the TV after a long day, but you decide to go to the gym instead. It’s not a great workout. You’re weary. Yet it feels good to be out of the house. When you get back, you have a warm bath, listen to an audiobook for a while, and have an early night. The next day, you wake up feeling much more refreshed than you do after a night of scrolling in front of the TV.
- You’re about to order a takeaway. Instead, you ferret about in the fridge, and make a frittata from eggs, leftovers, a few bits of veg. It takes 15 minutes. Do this for a few weeks, and you will have saved enough cash to go to that fancy restaurant you’ve been wanting to try, and have a proper treat night out. (Bonus points if you cook with family or friends, catching up on your news while you chop and stir.)
Sometimes, perhaps the inconvenience is the point.
A handwritten note congratulating a friend on some success or commiserating with them for a loss or a disappointment means more than a text or email precisely because you’ve gone to the extra time and trouble of writing it and posting it.
One of the joys of a hand-thrown pot, a knitted sweater, a cake someone has baked, a live performance is that it is completely unique. The effort, the originality, the human interaction is what makes it so precious.
Recently, an artist client asked me why I bother writing, when AI can do it for me. He’s a curious soul. His question was genuine, and it led to an interesting discussion.
I’ve tried feeding samples my work into AI, and asking it to imitate my style. Claude does a pretty good job of it. And if writing is difficult for you, by all means use it if it helps.
I sometimes use it now to write a first draft of marketing copy. What it comes up with is often boring and formulaic, but it gives me something to react against, to work with and make my own.
But in general, I don’t write to tell people what I think.
I write to find out what I think. What you’re reading now is the result of several long walks and many drafts, over a few weeks. The seeds of it came from conversations with the brilliant creative professionals I work with as a coach, and from my own morning journalling.
Writing helps me organise and clarify my thoughts, in the same way my client’s painting helped him process his ideas and emotions. For both of us, the journey matters as much as the result. Even though it’s not always easy.
Mikey Shulman, CEO of the generative music app Suno AI, created a stir last year when he said that making music isn’t fun.
“It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”
I agree. It is hard to play a musical instrument.
I learned to play the oboe at school, practicing for hours and playing in a youth orchestra every weekend for five years. I never got close to being good at it, and eventually realised that I should maybe focus on writing instead.
But I don’t regret a moment of it. Playing an instrument taught me such a lot about discipline, practice, incremental improvements – and the joy of making art with others.
With music, as with most creative work, the difficulty is the point. It’s what makes it so satisfying. For the musicians. But also for the listener.
If a song took minutes to make with Suno AI, if the lyrics are written by ChatGPT, the singer doesn’t really exist, the emotions are manufactured and even the band’s photos and video are fake, what is it for, exactly? How does the listener connect with it? What does it mean?
I’m all for ease and joy.
As regular readers of this newsletter will know, two of my favourite questions are:
- How could this be more fun?
- What would this look like if it were simple or easy?
But there isn’t a shortcut, a hack, a painless route to everything. Worthwhile work is sometimes hard. The trick with creative work is to expect difficulty, to prepare for it – and to be willing to work through it. Because you know there might be something magical on the other side.
The Harvard Business Review once asked Jerry Seinfeld if he could have avoided burnout and kept his long-running comedy show going if he had bought in management consultants to help him create a more efficient writing process.
“If you’re efficient,” Seinfeld replied, “you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it – every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting.”
A few weeks ago, we rewatched one of my favourite Seinfeld episodes – The Strike, in which we learn about Festivus, the Constanza family’s alternative mid-winter celebration – for the upteenth time. And it still made me laugh.
So how do we embrace inconvenience?
I’m just back from a four-day break in Wroclaw.
We walked everywhere. We saw some exciting art, and spotted a red squirrel scampering across a city centre road. We sat in a beach bar beside the river Oder, and in some gorgeous outdoor restaurants, reading and talking.
It was bliss.
And it reminded me that the real world is messy, full of friction – but also magnificent, if you let it in. Most of us feel this, on holidays, or while travelling. So how do we take it home?
Some strategies to try:
Try taking a day a week (at least) away from screens. If your work involves computers, make a couple of evenings screen-free. Or have a weekend tech detox. Use the time to read, walk, listen to music, cook a meal, socialise, take up a hobby. And see what happens.
Embrace inconvenience, sometimes. Deliberately do it the harder way, just to see what it opens up.
Don’t give up when your creative work gets hard. Expect it. And understand that your brain will immediately try to protect you with distractions, procrastination, shiny new ideas. But you can choose not to give in to that.
Choose life. In all its messy abundance.
Choose creativity. With all its difficulties.
Choose connection, community. Because we’re always better together.
Choose boredom, sometimes. It’s a space where ideas can grow.
Choose friction.
Come alive.
Because you, at your most alive, is what the world needs most right now.
Now over to you…
What do you think? When do you embrace convenience, and when do you choose to do it the harder way?
What do you think?