![\"\"](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2021\/04\/friction4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Man, life can be a slog sometimes. <\/span><\/p>\n Each day, annoying little piddly things arise that aren\u2019t hard to manage one by one, but, when taken together, really muck up your mojo. Your car breaks down, your kid gets sick, an employee loses a file, you\u2019ve discovered a leak in your roof . . . and it\u2019s just 9 a.m. <\/span><\/p>\n How do you handle these small-but-rhythm-destroying vexations? How do you deal with slog-inducing annoyances without letting them throw a wrench in the gears of your goals?<\/span><\/p>\n Thankfully, famed war strategist Carl von Clausewitz provided some insights in his landmark work, <\/span>On War<\/span><\/i><\/a>, that are just as applicable to the home and office, as the battlefield. <\/span><\/p>\n Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Clausewitz\u2019s most enduring and insightful idea in <\/span>On<\/span><\/i> War <\/span><\/i>is<\/span> friction. <\/span><\/p>\n Friction explains why a general can have a plan for battle that looks perfect on paper, but falls apart in real life. Friction torpedos morale and slows down action.<\/span><\/p>\n Friction isn\u2019t just one thing. It\u2019s the accumulation of a bunch of little things. Says Clausewitz:<\/span><\/p>\n Countless minor incidents\u2014the kind you can never really foresee\u2014combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls far short of the intended goal. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n To help his readers understand friction in warfare, he gives an analogy from everyday life in the 19th century that we can still imagine parallels to today:<\/span><\/p>\n Imagine a traveler who late in the day decides to cover two more stages before nightfall. Only four or five hours more, on a paved highway with relays of horses: it should be an easy trip. But at the next station he finds no fresh horses, or only poor ones; the country grows hilly, the road bad, night falls, and finally after many difficulties he is only too glad to reach a resting place with any kind of primitive accommodation. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n As the complexity in any endeavor increases, friction increases as well, because there are simply more opportunities for things to get mucked up. The bigger and more complicated the endeavor, the larger the amount of friction. <\/span><\/p>\n A factor that increases complexity, and thus friction, more than any other, is the inclusion of other human beings. Humans are the ultimate friction creators. Clausewitz notes that a battalion, by its very nature, will experience plenty of friction, because it\u2019s made up of many different individuals who can interact with each other in a multiplicity of problem-producing ways. One soldier gets scared and runs, resulting in other soldiers catching the fear contagion and running. Before you know it, you\u2019ve got an unplanned, chaotic retreat. Damn you, friction!<\/span><\/p>\n If life seems like an annoying slog sometimes, it\u2019s because of friction. <\/span><\/p>\n Any endeavor, whether it\u2019s planning a party or starting a business or just living life, will encounter friction along the way. Little unforeseen pain points come together to make what seems easy to accomplish in theory, pretty hard to accomplish in practice. And because most of what we do in life involves our fellow human beings \u2014 the Vesuvian volcanoes of vexation \u2014 we experience a lot of friction in our lives.<\/span><\/p>\n If you want to avoid the annoyances of friction, just stay in your house, avoid people, take no action, and be an isolated, lifeless blob. <\/span><\/p>\n But what kind of life is that?<\/span><\/p>\n So if friction can\u2019t be avoided, how do you handle it?<\/span><\/p>\n To understand Clausewitz and his theory on war, you have to understand that he was a product of 19th century German Romanticism. This is the same movement that gave birth to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche<\/a> and the composer Richard Wagner. <\/span><\/p>\n For Clausewitz, all successful generals are geniuses in the Romantic sense. They have a constellation of mental and psychological characteristics that allow them to impose their individual will on the world around them. Romantics see life as an epic struggle between good and evil, action and inertia, mediocrity and greatness. They, as Isaiah Berlin put it, \u201c<\/span>search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals.\u201d<\/span> These qualities, along with traits like intuition and boldness, <\/span>marked Clausewitz\u2019s ideal of the Romantic leader. <\/span>If you want an embodiment of this ideal, just look at Napoleon.<\/span><\/p>\n Clausewitz believed that it was through harnessing the elements of the Romantic constitution that a man could deftly grapple with the obstacle of friction. <\/span><\/p>\n Anger and frustration largely arise from a mismatch of expectations. You thought things would go one \u2014 wholly smooth \u2014 way, but instead run into unforeseen obstacles. In the gap between how you envisioned things would happen and how they actually do; in your grief over the death of the scenario you imagined; in the effort needed to adjust to new circumstances; irritation burbles up. <\/span><\/p>\n Thus, Clausewitz says, the first step to getting a handle on friction is to recognize its reality, and inevitability:<\/span><\/p>\n An understanding of friction is a large part of that much-admired sense of warfare which a good general is supposed to possess. . . . The good general must know friction in order to overcome it whenever possible, and in order not to expect a standard of achievement in his operations which this very friction makes impossible.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n To keep friction from throwing you for a loop, you have to manage your expectations; you have to account for friction in assessing what you\u2019re realistically going to be able to accomplish. Making this assessment, accurately gauging how much friction you\u2019ll encounter, Clausewitz says, is a matter of instinct, honed over time and field-testing:<\/span><\/p>\n As with a man of the world instinct becomes almost habit so that he always acts, speaks, and moves appropriately, so only the experienced officer will make the right decision in major and minor matters\u2014at every pulsebeat of war. Practice and experience dictate the answer: \u2018this is possible, that is not.\u2019 <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Even though it\u2019s crucial to accept the inevitability of friction, this needn\u2019t be a matter of resentful resignation. If friction is normal in any endeavor, then it is something to embrace, and even take a kind of pride in \u2014 a sign that you’re <\/span>doing<\/span><\/i> something, taking action, engaging in life\u2019s heroic struggle. <\/span><\/p>\n Iron will-power can overcome this friction; it pulverizes every obstacle . . . The proud spirit’s firm will dominates the art of war as an obelisk dominates the town square on which all roads converge.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n So in any operation, friction is inevitable. How then do you deal with it?<\/span><\/p>\n For Clausewitz the Romantic, only the general with heroic <\/span>strength of will<\/span><\/i> can overcome the quicksand-ian pull of friction. In his chapter on military genius, he describes strength of will as being composed of four elements: energy, staunchness, endurance, and strength of mind.<\/span><\/p>\n Energy<\/span><\/i> for Clausewitz is about emotion. He understood that action requires motivation and motivation requires feeling; Stoicism has its limitations<\/a>. The bigger the action, the more feeling-based animation is needed: \u201cGreat strength,\u201d Clausewitz says, \u201cis not easily produced where there is no emotion.\u201d Clausewitz believed that ambition or the desire to be the best was the most powerful energy-giving emotion in war. <\/span><\/p>\n Staunchness <\/span><\/i>is the ability to not get rattled by a single setback or failure. <\/span><\/p>\n Endurance<\/span><\/i> is the ability to face a whole series of setbacks without wavering. <\/span><\/p>\n Strength of mind <\/span><\/i>is \u201cthe ability to keep one’s head at times of exceptional stress and violent emotion.\u201d For Clausewitz, a heroic genius needed strong emotions, but these feelings couldn\u2019t be allowed to run to extremes; emotions had to be checked and channeled through self-control.<\/span><\/p>\n The combination of these attributes gives a man the strength of will to power through friction. And it is only by powering through friction, that he gains this strength of will.<\/span><\/p>\n Even though Clausewitz instructed would-be commanders to overcome friction via iron willpower, he notes that \u201cof course [this effort] wears down the machine as well.\u201d Willpower is a limited resource<\/a>; the more you use for one thing, the less you have for others.<\/span><\/p>\n So while some friction is inevitable in any endeavor, you should eliminate it where you can: <\/span>Not<\/span><\/i> in giving up a goal in order to avoid its attendant friction, but in instances where it serves no purpose \u2014 where it arises due to inadequate planning, or merely acts as a superfluous, progress-impeding annoyance. <\/span><\/p>\n Some friction can be eliminated through redundancies<\/span><\/a>. In war, Clausewitz said, a battalion could have a strategic reserve of food and arms, ready to be tapped if\/when a breakdown in logistics occurred. You can bring an extra pen to a meeting in case yours runs out of ink; have a contingency plan for your Saturday in case the park you want to hit isn\u2019t open; know how to use a paper map<\/a> in case your phone can\u2019t get a signal.<\/span><\/p>\n Automation can eliminate some friction too, especially <\/span>concerning \u201clife admin\u201d tasks <\/a><\/span>like managing your finances, and even your social life. <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Save yourself steps where you can. Simplify every aspect of your life<\/a>. Declutter your digital devices<\/a>, and your house<\/a>. Practice mise-en-place<\/em><\/a> in your kitchen, and your home office.<\/p>\n To sum up, here is Clausewitz\u2019s battle plan for overcoming the friction that threatens to turn life into an annoying slog:<\/span><\/p>\n Man, life can be a slog sometimes. Each day, annoying little piddly things arise that aren\u2019t hard to manage one by one, but, when taken together, really muck up your mojo. Your car breaks down, your kid gets sick, an employee loses a file, you\u2019ve discovered a leak in your roof . . . and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":135607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[502,42269],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-135599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character","category-self-improvement"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2021\/04\/claus-feat-538x280.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2021\/04\/claus-feat-768x681.jpg","aom":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2021\/04\/claus-feat-372x230.jpg","reactor-320":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2021\/04\/claus-feat-320x284.jpg","reactor-640":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2021\/04\/claus-feat-640x567.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135599"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135610,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135599\/revisions\/135610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135599"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=135599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Friction, Friction Everywhere<\/span><\/h3>\n
Overcoming Friction Through Romantic Genius<\/span><\/h3>\n
Change Your Mindset on Friction<\/h3>\n
Dominate Friction Through Sheer Psychological Will<\/h3>\n
Eliminate Friction Where You Can<\/h3>\n
\n