Gen Z: if you want to succeed at work, you need to start friction-maxxing

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, life was full of friction. No GPS meant walking into the gas station to ask for directions. No contactless apps meant talking to someone behind the counter to order your food. And when you called a friend on the land line and their dad answered, you had about 30 seconds of awkward small talk before you got handed over. Nobody coached you through it. It was just Tuesday. Gen Z, you didn’t get that. And before you skip past this, that is not a criticism. The world that was built for you is designed to eliminate every uncomfortable human moment before you even feel it. But what nobody is telling you is that experiencing these small moments of friction is essential to your career success. A writer named Kathryn Jezer-Morton recently named the deliberate practice of building tolerance for the discomfort that technology has designed away “friction-maxxing.” A phone call to a stranger qualifies. Unlike a text, there’s no drafting, deleting or do-over. You’re a little vulnerable in real time, with no way to read the other person’s face. You’ve probably seen this on TikTok: moms filming their teenagers making their own dentist appointments, coaching them through an interaction that used to happen without a second thought. The moms aren’t embarrassing their kids. They’re giving them low stakes training reps they should have been getting all along. And because you’re early in your career, these skills matter more now than ever before. AI is coming after IQ first. The coding, the data work, the research, the analysis—these are the entry-level skills getting automated right now. What doesn’t get automated is the moment where two people disagree and one of them has to make the case calmly, listen to the challenge and come out the other side with something better. A 2025 survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities found that 96% of employers say the ability to work through disagreement productively matters in today’s workplace. On