Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of the Ogilvy advertising agency, famously told a story about an office building where people complained that an elevator took too long to arrive. Instead of spending $1 million to make the elevators 5 percent faster, they solved the problem by spending around $100 to add mirrors so people could look at themselves... See more

A number of recent studies, while small in scale, have suggested that we grieve the loss of friction that comes from skipping over time-intensive or frustrating tasks, particularly in creative scenarios.