Netflix had to make lots of good decisions to get to where they are, but the most critical—the linchpin of what is now an empire, was the design of the Netflix envelope.

To start anything new, you have to remove friction. Precisely how much you have to remove is unknowable.

Whether you’re trying to sell a new thing, change a behavior, or improve the world, the question that you need to return to over and over again is “How can we make this easier? More frictionless?”

It requires sensitivity to discover the deepest, most entrenched friction.

The most difficult friction is completely hidden from us. We’ve just accepted it as reality, a la The Matrix. You won’t discover this friction through focus groups or A/B testing.

In 2006, almost no one thought they wanted a touchscreen keyboard, yet literally everyone did.

The best way to discover these hidden points of friction is to be sensitive to your own negative feelings: anger, fear, anxiety, sadness, frustration, even violence.

The most successful change agents are deeply attuned to how much—and _why_—they hate the status quo.

We need to accept these points of friction as legitimate, as solid as a law of physics. They cannot be dismissed as stupid or unreasonable.

How big a deal is it to get a stamp? Well, Netflix’s current market cap is 243 billion dollars. Finding a stamp is a pretty big deal.

The energy to push through physical or psychological friction is a finite resource like any other.

The moment the price of a barrel of oil rises above a certain threshold, legions of humans and machines instantly and violently start exploding stone to release natural gas.

If you have an intuition that something should work but it isn’t, sit quietly. Your intuition is likely right, but the solution subtler than your awareness.

One thing is certain: Force amplifies friction. It may work once or twice but it can never create sustainable change.

We need to remember: Whether we’re hawking our wares or making the world a more just, kind, and equitable place, we are the ones with the agenda. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to make change easier for those we want to change.

It doesn’t matter how right we are.

We are surrounded by useful, potent structures that are rendered completely ineffective (or massively harmful) by minuscule points of friction.

Our politics, commerce, and change discourse is all shot through with brute force methods.

How can we make it easy to change that?