MamaWritesSpells

The invisible drag that makes good work feel harder than it should.

Most teams aren’t wasting time on purpose.
They’re bleeding it quietly.

It leaks out in five-minute delays.
In decisions that almost get made.
In Slack threads that exist solely to clarify something that should’ve been clear already.

Nobody flags it as a problem because nothing is technically “wrong.”
Work is getting done. People are showing up. Meetings are happening.

And yet — somehow — everything takes longer than it should.

That’s friction.

Not the dramatic kind.
Not the kind you file a ticket for.
The subtle, everyday resistance that makes progress feel like walking through wet sand.

Friction hides because it’s boring.
It doesn’t announce itself. It blends in.

It looks like:

• Re-explaining the same context to different people
• Revisiting decisions because they were never written down
• Tools that technically work but don’t quite fit how the team actually operates
• A process everyone follows but no one believes in

Individually, these moments feel harmless. Collectively, they’re exhausting.

Here’s the mistake teams make: they try to solve this by pushing harder.

More meetings.
More check-ins.
More tools.
More urgency.

But friction doesn’t respond to pressure.
It responds to attention.

The teams that move well aren’t faster because they hustle more — they’re faster because they’ve removed the small obstacles everyone else learned to step around.

They notice where momentum dies.
They notice where people hesitate.
They notice where work pauses not because it’s hard, but because no one’s quite sure what happens next.

That uncertainty? That’s friction talking.

One of the simplest (and most uncomfortable) questions a team can ask is:
Where do we keep losing time — without meaning to?

Not “Who’s slow?”
Not “Why isn’t this done yet?”
But where does effort get stuck?

Because friction doesn’t live in people.
It lives in systems, defaults, and unexamined habits.

Fixing it rarely requires a big overhaul.
Usually it’s small, almost disappointingly so:

• Decide once. Write it down. Stop re-deciding.
• Make ownership explicit instead of implied.
• Reduce handoffs where nothing is actually added.
• Remove steps that exist “just in case” no one remembers why.

The payoff isn’t just speed.
It’s relief.

When friction is reduced, teams don’t suddenly become superhuman — they just stop wasting energy fighting their own setup.

Work feels lighter.
Decisions land faster.
People spend less time managing the work and more time actually doing it.

That’s the goal, really.
Not productivity theater.
Not busyness as proof.

Just fewer invisible brakes.

Once you see friction, you can’t unsee it.
And once you start removing it, work gets quieter — in the best possible way.