I spend a lot of time alone with my thoughts. For the better part of the workday, I’m at home alone with a 13 month old. His vocabulary is pretty limited, and frankly he doesn’t talk that much to me. He talks to inanimate objects just fine, but I don’t get that much of his attention unless he needs something.

That’s OK though…it gives me time to think. Which is usually a good thing.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of friction and getting things accomplished. The concept has come at me from all sorts of places, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more the my reticular activation system takes over and brings the idea to my attention. It’s a constant positive feedback loop.

Friction: Resistance to relative motion

While that’s a paraphrase of the Dictionary.com definition, it’s the one I’m using. I’m finding myself stuck far too often. Stuck in one place with too much inertia to get going, and too much resistance to make it worthwhile. Recently, friction has been diverting my progress in my productivity as a whole.

Some time back, I switched to Todoist for my task management system. I had been using ToodleDo, but it simply wasn’t working for me. At the time, I wouldn’t have described my issues with ToodleDo as friction, but in retrospect that’s probably a pretty good answer to the question of why I sought a new solution.

I’m quite happy with Todoist. It’s allowed me to implement a more workable task management structure, and the seamless nature of the web, iOS, and desktop interfaces allows me to use it wherever I am. When I’m at my computer, I add things to the Todoist inbox with great ease…thus I’ve found myself capturing more of the ideas and tasks that I need to work on. Where I’m really struggling is when I’m not at a keyboard. While I still add things from my iPad and occasionally use my iPhone to add tasks, I find it a pain using either device. I’ve recently entertained the idea of adding a paper notebook to my arsenal so that I can capture ideas and tasks more easily.

But this feels like a cop-out.

While I’m a technology guy, and a systems guy, I’m not married to any particular technology. I’m perfectly happy to sit in a meeting and take notes on paper. During teleconferences I use a notepad to reduce the friction between ideas that are floated and their capture. So it’s not that I don’t like paper. It’s old-school, but so am I in many ways.

So what’s the issue, dear?

I carry my iPhone with me almost all the time. We’re a decade-and-a-half into the 21st Century, and I still can’t talk to my devices easily. Sure, I use Siri…some. But there’s still friction. I’ve created IFTTT recipes to help with some of my tasks, and I’ve even linked them to Siri input…but it still feels clunky. And that feeling creates an attitude that keeps me from using the technology at hand.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for, but something along the lines of the Star Trek insignia pin for communication with my tech would be great. Tap it, tell my device what to do, and it would get done. Let’s say I want to add a task to Todoist. Here’s what would happen:

• I’d tap the insignia pin
• I’d say “Add task ‘buy new gas can for mowers'”
• My iPhone would add the task to Todoist
• It would also add “Gas Can” to my OurGroceries shopping list

It’s not rocket science, but it would be better than what I do now. And that simple task is just the beginning. If I could talk to my devices and have them do smart things (hello, they’re smart phones) it would remove me from being a data entry clerk to my systems. That would be awesome.

When I was recently watching the movie Her, many of these ideas came to mind. Despite being creeped out by the movie (partly because I could completely understand falling in love with an AI), there were technologies and interactions with tech that fascinated me. I’m still pining for the computer interface Tom Cruise used in Minority Report. Now I’ve got an entirely new set of hopes for tech interactions from Her.

This whole idea of friction in everything is still on my mind. I’m searching for ways to reduce friction on capturing ideas and tasks. If you’ve read other posts of mine, you can be sure I’ll be thinking about it a lot more. You never know…I’ll may write about it more too.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear about things that get in the way of your productivity and how you’re addressing them. Anybody have any great solutions? What about big problems you’re trying to solve?