Friction Logging: Find and Fix Productivity Roadblocks

Why You’re Working Hard But Getting Nowhere

You’re busy. Constantly moving. Emails, meetings, tasks. Yet at 5pm, you look back and struggle to name one meaningful thing you accomplished.

It’s not laziness. It’s friction.

Productivity friction is the invisible resistance that drains your energy without producing results. It’s the colleague who always needs “just five minutes.” The system that requires three logins. The approval process that takes days for a decision that should take minutes.

Most productivity advice tells you to work harder or use better tools. But if you’re swimming against a current, technique doesn’t matter. You need to identify what’s creating the resistance.

That’s where friction logging comes in—a simple method borrowed from product design that helps you spot exactly what’s slowing you down.

What Is Friction Logging?

Friction logging is the systematic practice of recording every obstacle, delay, or annoyance you encounter whilst completing your work.

Think of it as keeping a detective’s notebook for your productivity. Every time something slows you down—even slightly—you write it down.

The premise is simple: You can’t fix what you can’t see. Most productivity friction points operate beneath conscious awareness. You adapt, work around it, and never question whether it should exist.

Friction logging forces visibility. Once documented, patterns emerge. The same roadblocks appear repeatedly. Suddenly, what felt like “just how things are” becomes a solvable problem.

Why Friction Logging Works

Traditional productivity methods assume you know what’s blocking you. They prescribe solutions: time blocking, better tools, morning routines.

But what if the real problem is the approval process that requires five signatures? Or the meeting culture that interrupts deep work every 90 minutes?

Friction logging starts with diagnosis, not prescription. It reveals your actual blockers, not theoretical ones.

Research on workflow bottlenecks shows that organisations waste enormous resources on symptoms whilst ignoring root causes. The same applies individually. You might struggle with time blocking not because you’re bad at planning, but because constant interruptions make any schedule impossible.

Friction logging identifies the real enemy.

The Three Types of Productivity Friction

Not all friction is equal. Understanding the type helps you choose the right solution.

1. System Friction (Tool and Process Problems)

This is friction created by the systems you use to work.

Examples:

Software that crashes or runs slowly. Three-step processes that could be one step. Tools that don’t integrate, forcing manual data transfer. Login requirements that interrupt flow.

System friction is often the easiest to fix once identified. It requires changing tools or processes, not behaviour.

2. People Friction (Human Interaction Blockers)

This is friction created by how people work together.

Examples:

Approval processes with long wait times. Meetings that could be emails. Colleagues who interrupt frequently. Unclear responsibilities causing repeated clarification.

People friction requires boundary-setting and communication changes. It’s harder to fix than system friction because it involves negotiating with others.

3. Personal Friction (Your Own Habits and Patterns)

This is friction you create for yourself.

Examples:

Checking email every five minutes. Starting multiple tasks without finishing any. Perfectionism that prevents completion. Avoiding difficult conversations that need to happen.

Personal friction is often invisible because it feels like “just who you are.” Friction logging makes it visible, turning unconscious patterns into conscious choices.

How to Start Friction Logging (Step-by-Step)

Step 1: Choose Your Focus Area

Don’t try to log everything at once. Pick one specific area where you suspect friction exists.

Good starting points:

Your morning routine until you start deep work. A specific project that feels harder than it should be. One day per week to capture typical friction. A recurring task that always takes longer than expected.

The more focused your scope, the clearer your insights will be.

Easy: Log one specific task

Choose something you do regularly—writing reports, processing emails, whatever feels frustrating. Log friction only during that specific activity.

Medium: Log one full workday

Track every friction point from 9am to 5pm. You’ll get a comprehensive view of daily blockers.

Advanced: Log for one week

Patterns become crystal clear across multiple days. You’ll spot recurring issues versus one-off problems.

Step 2: Capture Friction in Real-Time

This is crucial: log friction as it happens, not at the end of the day.

Memory is unreliable. The two-minute delay waiting for software to load feels insignificant in retrospect. But if it happens twelve times daily, that’s 24 minutes of pure waste.

Your logging system should be frictionless itself. Ironic, but important.

Methods that work:

Notebook on your desk. Note-taking app on your phone. Voice memo recorder. Shared document if logging for a team.

Whatever lets you capture friction within 5 seconds. If logging itself becomes a barrier, you’ll stop doing it.

What to record:

Time: When did the friction occur?
Type: System, people, or personal?
Description: What happened?
Duration: How long did it delay you?
Emotional impact: Annoying? Frustrating? Enraging?

Example entry: “10:47am – System – Expense software crashed mid-entry, lost all data, had to restart – 8 minutes – Very frustrating.”

Easy: Simple list format

Just write what happened and when. No fancy structure needed.

Medium: Use categories

Tag each friction point by type (system/people/personal) as you log it.

Advanced: Rate severity

Add a 1-10 impact score to each friction point. Helps prioritize fixes later.

Step 3: Review and Identify Patterns

After your logging period (one day, one week, one project), review your entries.

Don’t just skim—analyze. Look for:

Frequency: What appears repeatedly?
Impact: Which friction points cost the most time?
Fixability: Which are within your control to change?
Clusters: Do multiple friction points share a common cause?

Often, what looks like ten different problems is actually one root cause manifesting in various ways.

Example: You might log interruptions from colleagues, difficulty finding files, and confusion about priorities. The root cause? Lack of clarity about what you’re working on and when you’re available.

Similar to how the 1-3-5 rule forces you to prioritize daily tasks, friction logging forces you to prioritize what’s actually blocking your productivity.

Easy: Count occurrences

Simply tally how many times each issue appeared. The most frequent become your priorities.

Medium: Calculate time lost

Add up duration for each friction type. Quantify exactly where your time goes.

Advanced: Create a friction map

Visualize your workflow with friction points marked. See exactly where bottlenecks cluster.

Step 4: Eliminate, Automate, or Adapt

Now comes action. For each significant friction point, choose one of three approaches:

Eliminate: Can you remove this entirely? Many processes exist simply because “we’ve always done it this way.” Question everything. If eliminating isn’t possible, can you at least reduce frequency?

Automate: Can technology handle this? If you’re manually copying data between systems, that’s a clear automation candidate. If you’re typing the same email responses, create templates.

Adapt: If you can’t eliminate or automate, can you work around it? Schedule deep work when interruptions are least likely. Batch friction-heavy tasks together rather than scattering them throughout the day.

Start with your highest-impact friction points. You don’t need to fix everything—just the things causing the most damage.

Easy: Fix one quick win

Identify the easiest friction point to eliminate and do it today. Build momentum.

Medium: Create a friction reduction plan

List your top 5 friction points with specific actions and deadlines for each.

Advanced: Re-engineer your workflow

Use insights to redesign how you work. Might mean changing roles, tools, or schedules entirely.

Common Friction Points You’ll Discover

Based on hundreds of friction logs, here are the patterns that emerge repeatedly:

The Meeting Culture Problem

Meetings scattered throughout the day prevent deep work. Each one requires context-switching time before and after. You spend more time preparing for and recovering from meetings than in actual focused work.

Solution: Batch meetings into specific days or times. Protect certain days as meeting-free. Decline meetings without clear agendas.

The Notification Avalanche

Email, Slack, Teams, text messages—constant pinging fragments attention. Each notification creates a micro-interruption, even if you don’t respond.

Solution: Batch communications into scheduled blocks. Turn off all non-essential notifications. Set clear “available” and “unavailable” hours.

The Tool Complexity Trap

Too many tools, none talking to each other. Data lives in six places. Finding information takes longer than using it.

Solution: Consolidate tools. Accept “good enough” with integration over “perfect” without it. Document where things live.

The Unclear Priorities Problem

When everything feels urgent, nothing is. You spend mental energy repeatedly deciding what to work on rather than actually working.

Solution: Establish clear prioritization criteria. Use frameworks to make decisions once rather than repeatedly. Protect time for your true priorities.

The Perfectionism Pattern

Tasks expand to fill available time. You refine endlessly when “good enough” would suffice. The last 10% of polish takes 50% of the time.

Solution: Define “done” before starting. Set time limits. Recognize when diminishing returns kick in.

What Friction Logging Reveals That Other Methods Don’t

Most productivity systems tell you what to do: organize better, focus harder, plan more carefully.

Friction logging shows you what not to do—or more accurately, what’s stopping you from doing anything effectively.

It’s the difference between treating symptoms and diagnosing disease. You might spend months perfecting your mental performance strategies whilst ignoring that your workspace interruptions make focus impossible.

Friction logging reveals:

Hidden time sinks: The five-minute tasks that actually take thirty.
Energy drains: Tasks that exhaust you disproportionately to their importance.
False urgency: “Fires” you put out that wouldn’t exist with better systems.
Capacity limits: Where you’re genuinely at maximum versus where friction creates artificial limits.

Perhaps most valuably, friction logging shows you where your productivity advice conflicts with your reality. If every expert says “work in 90-minute blocks” but your friction log shows interruptions every 20 minutes, you need to fix the interruptions, not beat yourself up for failing to focus.

Your Next Steps

Friction logging works because it’s specific to you. Generic productivity advice fails because it ignores context. Friction logging starts with your context.

This week, try this:

Tomorrow, pick one recurring task that frustrates you. Log every friction point you encounter whilst doing it. Just for that one task.

At the end, review your notes. You’ll probably find 3-5 specific blockers. At least one will be easily fixable.

Fix that one thing. Repeat the task in a few days. Notice the difference.

That’s friction logging. Simple, specific, powerful.

The goal isn’t perfect productivity—that doesn’t exist. The goal is reducing unnecessary resistance so your effort produces proportional results.

You’re already working hard. Friction logging ensures that work actually goes somewhere.

Simon Shaw is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist with over 20 years of experience helping individuals identify and eliminate workplace barriers to performance. He specializes in translating organizational psychology research into practical methods that professionals can implement immediately.