Trends to Consider when making a Midlife Career Change: Friction versus Frictionless

This is the fifth column on the macro trends to consider when making your midlife career change.

Someone once said to me in the early days of Internet 1.0 that ‘everything that exists in the physical world will be replicated on the Internet.' In this new age we now have a choice between the way of the physical world and how society has operated in the physical world and a new, cyber way.

"Friction versus frictionless" is close to the subject of the last column, which was "place or no place," but friction is process, not physical location. Friction is the 'old' pre-Internet way that life was lived.

An example is higher education. If one wanted to go to night school to get an advanced degree, one would drive to campus after dinner, park the car, walk to the classroom, sit with other students listening to a professor, take notes, then when class was over, do the reverse trip home.

The frictionless variation would be that, after dinner, you would go sit down at your computer, log on with high speed access to the Internet and take an on-line course. This could be done whenever you wanted to that evening. No friction of the rubber tires on the road, the shoe leather on the campus sidewalks, the sitting in a specific place with other people, taking physical notes while listening to the professor.

In looking for your next career this is something to consider. If you are thinking of something that could be done either way, then you have to determine which path is the best for you. Just as with the decision about where to live, this choice about how to live is historically unique to the time in which we live.

If you like to work with your hands, interact face to face with people, or create physical products, you are more inclined to be satisfied with a friction career. If you create images, write, or consult, then perhaps frictionless is a better way to go. There are some entirely new careers that are purely frictionless -- such as blogging. No friction there.

On the other hand there are professions that, as the world has gone from analog to digital, remain steadfastly ‘analog’. Transportation is a high friction business; something that is ‘inherently analog'. Airplane pilot? Truck driver? Repair man? Home builder? All high friction businesses.

This is not necessarily an either or situation. For example, I write and speak for a living. The writing part in this day and age is a frictionless activity. Speaking on the other hand is a high friction business as I must get on a plane, rent a car, drive to the conference, speak to a room full of people, perhaps stay in a hotel and then return home. This works for me as I like both the time to be alone to work and then the time to interact with a large group of people. I don’t think I could do just one or the other. My desire for solitude is satisfied, as is my desire to be highly interactive with people. Either one exclusively would not be satisfying over the long term. This is one of the reasons that artists of all mediums tend to be very social in the evenings after their day of solitary activity is over.

It would be wise to combine the thinking of friction or frictionless with place or no place. If you chose a place business, think about how much additional friction you want in your life. Do you want the friction of a daily long commute? Do you want a business that dictates that you must be there every day? If you choose a frictionless business, can you find live human interaction elsewhere in your life to give you the probable needed balance? Can you find the satisfaction of being integral to a place, whether it be human or nature?

Before you make your career choice, stop and spend some time looking at it through the filter of friction or frictionless and it will most certainly offer a new way to analyze this most important choice before you make it.