The biggest thing slowing you down is often the thing you’ve learned to live with. I didn’t realize how true that was until I started looking at my personal life the same way I look at a business.
Recently, I found myself asking a simple question: Why is this harder than it should be?
And the answer wasn’t obvious at first.
When Effort Doesn’t Equal Progress
I’ve always believed in movement. If something isn’t working, you move. If you want to get somewhere, you keep going.
That mindset has served me well in business.
It’s how I build. It’s how I lead. It’s how I operate.
But in my personal life, especially raising children, I realized something:
Not all movement is progress.
There’s a lot of motion.
A lot of reacting.
A lot of overthinking.
You spend more time chasing than actually moving forward. And the harder you try, the heavier it feels.
The Friction You Don’t See
Looking back, the friction was always there.
It showed up as:
Overthinking decisions
Lack of clarity
Constant second-guessing
Trying to predict outcomes you can’t control
In business, you can model decisions. You can project outcomes. You can align stakeholders.
In life, especially in a family dynamic, it doesn’t work that way.
Different perspectives.
Different expectations.
Different priorities.
And when those don’t align, friction builds.
The mistake I made was thinking that more effort would solve it.
If I tried harder…
If I did more…
If I pushed further…
It would move forward.
But instead, it created weight. And that weight made everything harder.
The Cost of Friction
Friction doesn’t show up all at once. It builds slowly, quietly, over time. And if you don’t recognize it, it takes more than you realize.
For me, it cost:
Time
Energy
Money
Focus
Confidence
Momentum
It created hesitation where there used to be clarity.
It made me second-guess decisions I would normally trust.
And over time, it started to do something worse:
It made me question whether I was capable of the things I knew I could achieve.
That’s what friction does.
It doesn’t just slow you down. It changes how you see yourself.
When it Finally Becomes Clear
For me, the clarity didn’t come gradually. It came when everything stopped working. After all the effort, all the time, all the resources, I realized something I didn’t want to admit:
I didn’t have control.
And that’s when it clicked.
This wasn’t just life being difficult.
This wasn’t just timing.
This was friction.
Where Friction Lives in Business
Once I saw it personally, I couldn’t unsee it professionally.
Friction in companies shows up the same way:
Things taking longer than they should
Decisions getting delayed
Processes becoming more complicated than necessary
Teams misaligned on what matters
One of the biggest sources of friction I see is staffing.
Companies think they have a skill gap. Most of the time, they have a fit gap.
The wrong person in the wrong seat doesn’t just slow things down; it creates friction across the entire system.
We recently saw this while implementing a new client.
There was friction in the process. Not because the model didn’t work, but because something small wasn’t aligned.
We adjusted the system.
Added structure.
Removed the bottleneck.
And just like that, the friction dropped.
Same people.
Same goals.
Different outcome.
Why Friction is Dangerous
Friction is dangerous because it doesn’t stop you.
It slows you just enough that you never get where you’re trying to go.
It lowers your ceiling.
It limits your potential.
And over time, it makes that limitation feel normal.
That’s the real risk.
Not failure.
Settling into a version of your life or your business that isn’t what it’s capable of becoming.
What People Get Wrong
Most people think friction can be eliminated.
It can’t.
As long as gravity exists, there will always be friction.
The goal isn’t perfection.
The goal is reduction.
And one of the biggest mistakes I see is people trying to solve friction with emotion.
Rushed decisions.
Overcorrections.
Reaction instead of reflection.
That doesn’t remove friction.
It usually creates more of it.
Seeing it Clearly
I don’t think the answer is making perfect decisions. It’s making decisions and acting on them.
Friction grows when action stalls.
Now, when something feels off, I ask:
Why does this feel harder than it should?
Where is this more complex than necessary?
What part of this can be simplified?
Because most of the time, the problem isn’t the goal.
It’s everything built around it.
Breaking it Down
If something feels harder than it should, it needs to be broken down.
Not avoided.
Not overthought.
Not forced.
Broken down.
Simplified.
Examined.
Refined.
Because progress doesn’t come from pushing harder into friction. It comes from understanding where it lives and removing what doesn’t belong.
Final Thought
Friction doesn’t announce itself.
It hides in routines.
In habits.
In relationships.
In processes.
In decisions you’ve stopped questioning.
And the longer it stays there, the more normal it feels.
Until one day, you look at where you are and wonder why it took so long to get there.
The answer is usually the same:
You learned to live with something that was slowing you down.
Matt Sarant is a proud member of the Kennedy Services family. Kennedy Services is one of Maryland’s oldest independent, woman-owned staffing services, headquartered in the heart of Baltimore City.