Friction-maxxing your phone: How to cut out convenience and spend less on the apps

For this week’s Top Story, we’re revealing ways to stop the impulse buy—and recognize when you’re being pressured to add to cart.

A few weeks ago, I was researching the cost of Toronto Raptors game tickets, on my iPhone, to buy as a birthday gift for my partner. My searches led me to StubHub, and as I began contemplating the view from various seats, messages like “2 tickets left!” and “selling fast!” popped up. I added a pair of tickets to my cart, just to see the total cost with the taxes and fees. That action triggered a countdown timer, threatening to release my tickets in 10 minutes to another eager fan if I didn’t pay right away. So, purchase the tickets I did. After a split-second Face ID check, my saved credit card info populated the requisite fields. A few clicks later and the tickets were mine.

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I hadn’t intended to buy those tickets at that moment. My goal was just to research the cost and options to compare with other gift ideas. But the ease of that purchase demonstrates how technology has made it so convenient to buy things on our smartphones, and how nudges that apps and sites give edge us closer to buying.

Adding friction to undesirable behaviours

Gone are the days of pulling out our wallets and counting cash or manually inputting a credit card number at an online checkout. That’s what makes the concept of friction-maxxing—eliminating some of life’s conveniences, leading to more enjoyment in life—so intriguing. The term was coined by The Cut columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton in her article “In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing.” Jezer-Morton’s theory touched many areas, from browsing a cookbook for recipes instead of asking ChatGPT to going to the grocery store instead of buying provisions online. When it comes to our phones—and how we spend money with them—there is a lot of friction that we could be adding.

Natasha Knox, a certified financial planner and founder of Alaphia Financial Wellness, is all about friction-maxxing our automated phone spending. “Digital purchasing has made life easier in a lot of ways,” she says. “I think friction-maxxing has to be about adding thoughtfulness to the decisions.”

Convenience isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Knox encourages her clients to automate desirable behaviours, like saving and paying off bills. But friction should be added to costly less desirable habits, like online shopping when you’re bored and ordering from food delivery apps beyond treats. “It’s forcing a pause and giving a person that little bit of breathing time to say, ‘Hey, is this really what I want to be doing?’” she says.

Friction-maxxing smartphones for smarter purchases

There are a few ways that you can set up your smartphone to reduce instantaneous purchases. Jay Olson, a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychology researches smartphone addiction. He suggests deleting saved credit card information and disabling all notifications from money-sucking apps. “Notifications can nudge you over the threshold to purchase,” he says. “They’ll know what times you’re likely to purchase. Then they’ll send you a notification at that time, saying, ‘Hey, this is 10% off’, which can make people more likely to buy.”

A more drastic but effective measure from Olson is to delete certain apps from your phone (not just removing them from the home screen). Then you move the task of ordering or buying to your laptop instead. “That’s quite an added friction, compared to an app where there’s a few clicks and you can have something delivered, versus opening up the computer, checking the website and putting in your password,” he says.

Another strategy, suggested by Knox, is to dedicate one designated day a week for all of your phone shopping. Then it’s not spontaneous. “If you have to make digital purchases, you only do it on that one day, and add them up before you make the purchase,” she says. “Part of frictionless shopping is the tiny little amounts that seem inconsequential, but added up over the course of a week, they suddenly become more substantial.” There are other willpower-based strategies she suggests, like imposing a rule to leave items in an online cart for 24 hours. “Add something to a wish list and then figure out where the money is coming from before you buy it. Those are all friction-heavy things.” And of course there’s the five-day rule, where you wait five days for any non-essential purchases to see if you truly want that item.

How to spend less and shop less on your phone

Reducing your screen time altogether is another useful strategy. And while there are screen-time management apps and devices like Brick, Opal and Phone Free, Olson doesn’t personally recommend them. “If technology itself is the problem, we don’t want to solve it by adding more technology and more apps,” he says.

There are more extreme measures that you can take to deter phone usage and reduce spending, like keeping your smartphone on grayscale or even using a dumbphone, but Olson believes that measures that add too much friction can be hard to sustain. So, don’t feel bad if you don’t stick to every friction-maxxing measure you impose.

“There’s kind of a sweet spot of friction or inconvenience that reduces habitual behaviour, but is also sustainable over time,” he says. “The most important part is experimenting with different things and finding what works for you.”

Read more from this issue of The Get:

1. The risky business of hype buying and resale in Canada
2. Why Bruce Sellery says the 30% rule may be irrelevant
3. Are HVAC maintenance plans worth it for Canadians?
4. What are my options for building real wealth without the stock market?