Friction

Hello family, friends, and Anna.

I do not have a smartphone, buy things online through debit card, or drive. These are all forms of friction in my life, and I'm very happy to have them. It's not that I physically couldn't remedy these issues- it's that I don't think of them as issues. In many ways, I have been very grateful to have these forms of friction in my life.

I do have a phone which can txt, call, play mp3s, and I'm perfectly happy to have these and only these features. Many, MANY people have called me out on my Luddite phone which the pilgrims used and told me, in no uncertain terms, that getting a smartphone is very cheap these days and a boon for interacting with others. “A phone with physical buttons?” they say, “but how do you go on Facebook/Reddit/Tindr/Spotify/Candy Crush/Snapchat?”

The simple answer is “I don't”.

This has been fine for me. I can do all of my internet exploring when I'm at my desktop computer, and if I need to use Google Maps (and this is tricky logic for some people to follow), I do it before I leave the house. However, the real benefit for me is that sometimes I have the attention span of a cocaine-riddled puppy. Spending time away from the internet can allow me to consider what it is that I want to be doing online, and having easy access could potentially overfill my brain with constant trips to the internet. Imagine you gave a child a magic portal to the cookie jar- sure, that might sound great to the child, but I am enough more man than child as a man-child to know that the consequences could be disastrous. Similarly, I do not buy things online. It's not that I can't, but I have very consciously decided that if I want a bowtie on Etsy or a book from Amazon.com I am forced to use an intermediary, a friend who will reluctantly purchase the item for me which I can compensate them later. Having this process in place makes me only buy things I know I really want, and not impulse buy every pirate medallion I see available on a website.

Not driving has been a source of friction which has been less helpful than the others I have mentioned, but there are still a few benefits from using public transport or walking. I would put money on the table that I walk 15km in a week, and this is the only exercise I ever get unless carrying textbooks or bottles of Merlot is counted as meager weight-lifting. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts during bus rides which means I have a dedicated allotment of time to become more informed and more literate. However, the feeling I have been having more and more is that the benefits of not driving has slowly, but surely, have stayed the same while the benefits of driving have kept with the inflation of my own independence and maturity.

There are two concepts I want to bring up at this point- opportunity costs and transition costs. Opportunity cost is that whatever you're doing, you could be doing something else and you may be missing out. I have a Bachelor's degree, an Honour's degree, and a Diploma of Teaching (Secondary). The Honour's degree is one year full-time, and also not necessary for a career as a schoolteacher, and the year I was writing papers, doing research, reading academic journals, watching films and meeting with supervisors, I might have been teaching at a high school. As a result of that, the Honour's degree had the opportunity cost of one year's starting salary of a teacher (in the neighbourhood of $47,000 but minus any other costs I might have incurred in that role). The other concept is transition costs. Transition costs are costs you make when you transition from one thing to another. During my transition from a high schooler to an undergraduate, I had to accept that much more time initially had to be spent working on assignments and going to lectures while I was transitioning from one form of education to another. I worked maybe 40% more intensely during my first semester in undergrad than any other semester because I was still working out how to be a uni student. I was happy to make that transition cost because it meant having a greater output on my own learning.

Now, I see virtually no opportunity cost in not getting a smartphone. I accept that the Law of Unintended Consequences means that maybe I don't know what I may be missing out on, but right now, I see no way that a smartphone could improve the life I am currently leading with my Nokia C3. The transition cost towards getting a smartphone would start with the $400 a reasonable phone would cost, and then continue for several weeks of frustration, learning how to interact with the phone itself. I have therefore concluded that not upgrading a smartphone has been a wise move. Likewise, there is no transition cost in learning how to purchase things online, but I am not willing to risk buying things online based on how my impulse control has been in the past.

However, I've gotten to the point where the opportunity costs towards learning to drive are outweighing both the benefits of friction and the transition costs. Without a doubt, learning to drive would be a mammoth transition cost, for a car, and people's time in which they supervise my driving until I get my restricted license. I've reached the point where everyone's insurance premiums should go up, and buy a car. My big barrier towards learning to drive has been that I have not had a car to practise in. My thoughts were always “I'll buy a car when I get my restricted” but it seems that if I don't get a car now, I may never get my restricted. I am not saying that I will definitely get a car because all of the research shows that announcing your goals makes you feel less accountable to that goal, but I am now in the market to get on the road in an iron death cage. I will accept that this may not be such a good idea in the short term, but in the long term, this is something I need to do. Like getting a smartphone or online shopping, there may be unintended consequences I am not yet aware of, but the Devil's in the details and I'm a big fan of his work.