'My word for 2026 is "discomfort." Without it, we're unravelling.'

The perils of a life devoid of all inconvenience have been whispering at us for a while now. But in the past 12 months, fuelled by the stratospheric rise of tech and AI, they've started to scream.

Back in 2021, Michael Easter's book The Comfort Crisis spoke of the need to incorporate intentional discomfort into our everyday lives in the face of the technology and convenience that is fast erasing it.

"Most people today rarely step outside their comfort zones," writes Easter.

Watch the hosts of Mamamia Out Loud on whether tradwives are coming for our friendships. Post continues below.

"We are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, under-challenged, safety-netted lives."

And that was before generative AI exploded onto the scene.

Fast-forward to 2026, and the erasure of any sort of friction or discomfort has been turbocharged to the point of not even having to think of an email reply — one is already pre-drafted for you.

The way this reality chafes against our understanding of what it means to be human has continued to take hold in online narratives.

Jedidiah Jenkins, author of To Shake The Sleeping Self, published an extract from his Substack earlier last year that quickly went viral.

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"My friend Margie and I talk a lot about how the modern world has been built on the removal of friction," he writes.

"Anything that is a bit hard, remove it and make a million dollars. Is hailing a taxi hard? How about an app.

"Is going to the grocery store annoying? How about an app? Are dating and rejection hard? How about endless swiping."

And yet, he continues, a look back at history — either your own, or the world's —will illustrate just how essential those tiny hardships are for building the muscles of growth.

"Study the virtues, study the mystic poets, study the virtues," he continued, "and it seems that friction is the only teacher."

Psychologist Anoushka Dowling agrees.

Friction and discomfort as psychological superpowers.

"'Friction' would be considered any mental or social barrier that we may have to overcome in our day-to-day lives," she explained.

"It's doing the hard stuff because we know we need to, to get to the outcome we're seeking — anything that presents an achievable challenge that requires us to use psychological and emotional resources.

"Put simply, if we remove these challenges from our lives, to make life easier, then we're removing the opportunities to build resilience and tolerance."

"Think of it like a bank account," Dowling continued, "Every time you do something despite the friction, you're depositing credits into the bank of resilience, so when something comes along, that is not just friction, but a significant life challenge. You have something to withdraw from.

"Your ability to cope with stress and adversity will be covered by the deposits you've previously made, and it won't leave you in a deficit."

More and more of us are waking up to this psychological savings plan. The Cut recently published a piece by Kathryn Jezer-Morton entitled 'In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing', extolling the virtues of choosing the less convenient path whenever two options are present.

The price of community is inconvenience.

And it's not just in terms of personal development that too much comfort is hurting us.

A backlash against the self-focused, western therapy approach dubbed 'protect your peace' culture has begun in the face of a growing loneliness epidemic.

"Expecting constant happiness is both unrealistic and psychologically unhelpful," explained clinical psychotherapist Julie Sweet from Seaway Counselling and Psychotherapy.

"Wellbeing is built through the full range of human emotional experience, not just the enjoyable parts."

Sweet cautions that removing the inconvenient or uncomfortable parts of life can come at the cost of vital social structures as well.

Indeed, it's become clear that instead of constantly complaining about wanting a village to support us, we needed to actually become that village.

We've all heard parents online (or perhaps been guilty of it ourselves) complaining about the isolation of raising children in one breath, then lamenting the fact that they'd been invited to 'too many' birthday parties in the next.

We've managed to forget that 'the price of community is inconvenience' — a phrase that gained a lot of traction on social media in the final months of last year.

So, what does that actually look like?

For me, community-building means carving out a few hours of the weekend to help a friend move, even when I was looking forward to some 'me time' (read: scrolling TikTok once the kids were occupied).

It's dropping a meal over to a friend with a sick toddler, or helping a friend paint her bathroom tiles. It's saying yes to the playdate when I'd rather not make small talk. Organising the event rather than handballing it onto that one high-effort friend.

It's hosting the get-together at my house, but serving toasties instead of fancy food and refusing to clean to exhaustion beforehand. Letting people see me in my messy imperfection as a sign that I'll accept them in theirs.

Personally, incorporating more friction or discomfort into my life looks like committing to going the long way around on tasks I've previously set to autopilot.

Listen to the episode of Mamamia Out Loud where the hosts discuss our lack of community. Post continues below.

Exercising without a podcast or audiobook. Refusing to ask ChatGPT. Setting myself lengthy tasks that require consistent effort, rather than outsourcing them. Learning something new.

Denying myself the binge-watch compulsion, and building up anticipation by only watching one new episode of an addictive show per week. Doing more with my hands. Walking to the shops instead of driving. Having hard conversations. Choosing kind over nice.

And who knows if microdosing discomfort in this way will be enough to stem the tide of ennui and apathy that threatens to overwhelm us. But as Sweet says, we stand to lose a hell of a lot if we don't at least try.

"In a world where it is increasingly easy to outsource effort, avoid friction, or choose screens or AI over human interaction," she cautioned.

"We risk losing the very skills that sustain psychological health — emotional tolerance, relational capacity, attention, and presence."

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