A recent New York Times article highlighted research estimating that these everyday frustrations, what some are now calling the “Annoyance Economy”, cost American families approximately $165 billion a year in wasted time and money. That’s a staggering number, but what struck me wasn’t simply the financial cost. It was the realization that what is really being taken from us isn’t just money, it’s time. And time is our most valuable commodity. Unlike money, we can’t earn more of it, save it for later, or get it back once it’s gone. Every hour spent navigating a broken process, waiting on hold, fighting hidden fees, or trying to reach an actual human being is an hour we’ll never recover. It’s time that could have been spent with family, with friends, pursuing something meaningful, building relationships, or simply enjoying life.

To be fair, not every frustrating customer experience is the result of bad intentions. Some friction comes from outdated systems, poorly designed processes, organizational silos, or regulations that haven’t kept pace with technology. But intent doesn’t change impact. The customer experiences the frustration the same way, regardless of whether it was created accidentally or deliberately. What makes the Annoyance Economy particularly troubling is that some of these obstacles appear to be more than accidental. The research cited in the article found that companies making it more difficult for customers to cancel subscriptions can increase revenue significantly. From a quarterly earnings perspective, that may look like success. From a relationship perspective, I’m not so sure.

It raises a question that every business should be asking… Just because something increases short-term revenue, does that make it a good long-term strategy?

For years, I’ve talked about RETURN ON RELATIONSHIP and the idea that trust is one of the most valuable assets any individual, brand, or business can build. Trust grows when people believe you respect them, value them, and genuinely care about the experience you’re creating for them. Every interaction either strengthens that trust or weakens it. Every customer experience either makes a deposit into the relationship or creates a withdrawal from it.

The Annoyance Economy often works in the opposite direction. Every hidden fee, every unnecessary click, every confusing process, every delayed response, and every obstacle placed between a customer and what they are trying to accomplish sends a message. Maybe not an explicit one, but a message nonetheless. It tells people that their time is less valuable than your revenue. It tells them that making things easier for your organization matters more than making things easier for them. It tells them that keeping them trapped is more important than serving them well. Companies may view these tactics as small optimizations, a few more retained subscriptions, a slightly lower cancellation rate, a little more revenue, but customers don’t experience them as metrics. They experience them as frustration, as disrespect, and eventually as a reason to look elsewhere.

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that loyalty and captivity are not the same thing. Too many organizations mistake customer inertia for customer loyalty. People may stay because it’s difficult to leave, because the process is frustrating, or because the barriers to exit have been intentionally raised. But that’s not loyalty. Loyalty is earned when people want to stay, not when you’ve made it difficult for them to leave. Unfortunately, many organizations spend enormous resources trying to build loyalty through branding, advertising, customer acquisition, and retention campaigns while simultaneously undermining it through the very experiences customers remember most. Eventually the math catches up because trust, like any relationship asset, compounds over time in both directions.

What makes this conversation even more relevant today is the growing role of AI in customer experience. AI has tremendous potential to eliminate friction, simplify processes, and help people solve problems faster. It can free people from tedious tasks and give them back something increasingly precious… their time. But it can also be used to scale frustration. We’ve all encountered chatbots that seem designed to prevent access to a human being rather than help us reach one. We’ve all experienced automated systems that appear responsive while actually delaying resolution. The reality is that using technology to create friction isn’t new. When I worked at 1-800-Flowers in the late 1990s, customer service agents were often trained to initially say “no” because many customers would simply accept the answer and end the call. The customer had to push past the “no” to get to the “yes.” The technology may have changed, but the temptation remains the same: create just enough friction that some people give up. If AI simply enables organizations to scale annoyance more efficiently, then we’ve missed one of the greatest opportunities technology offers. Technology should remove barriers, create time, and make interactions simpler, faster, and more human… not less.

Perhaps that’s why the Annoyance Economy and RETURN ON RELATIONSHIP feel like opposite philosophies. One asks, “How much inconvenience will people tolerate before they give up?” The other asks, “How much value can we create for people before they tell others about us?” One treats customer frustration as a revenue opportunity. The other treats customer trust as an asset worth protecting and growing. The businesses that ultimately earn lasting loyalty won’t be the ones that become experts at trapping customers. They’ll be the ones that respect people’s time, attention, and intelligence. They’ll be the ones that make it easy to do business with them, easy to get help, and yes, even easy to leave because they are confident that treating people well is still one of the most effective retention strategies ever created.

The Annoyance Economy may generate short-term profits, but trust creates long-term value.

And in a world where technology is supposed to be making life easier, perhaps it’s time we stopped measuring success by how effectively companies can capture our attention, trap our subscriptions, or consume our time, and started measuring it by how well they help us get those things back.

In the end, the organizations that win won’t be the ones that figured out how to profit from people’s frustration… they’ll be the ones that earned the right to people’s trust.

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Everyone, from both sides of the aisle, needs to push back on administrations that are all in on empowering Silicon Valley to unleash what I call ATTENTION HEROIN indiscriminately on our nation’s children.

Not to mention on all of us. And yes, I chose those words, ATTENTION HEROIN, intentionally.

Because these platforms are not simply designed to entertain or inform us. They are engineered to capture, hold, and monetize human attention as aggressively as possible. The longer we scroll, react, argue, compare, and consume… the more profitable they become.

And not just profitable… powerful.

Because attention has become one of the most valuable commodities on earth. The companies that control it influence not only what we buy, but increasingly what we see, believe, feel, and focus on. Improving people’s lives is often secondary unless it also improves engagement, growth, and revenue.

Children are growing up inside systems optimized for engagement before they are emotionally mature enough to understand what’s happening to them. Adults are struggling too.

This is not a left issue or a right issue. It is a human issue.

Technology itself is not the villain. I believe deeply in the power of technology to amplify humanity, relationships, and community. But somewhere along the way, optimization overtook intention. Engagement became more important than enrichment. And now we are all living with the consequences: shortened attention spans, rising anxiety, performative behavior, outrage addiction, loneliness, and a growing inability to simply be present with one another.

The scariest part? AI will make these systems even better at capturing and manipulating human attention. We should all be asking: At what point did engagement stop being innovation… and become exploitation? Because I believe we are already there… AND it’s getting worse.

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Instead, I see too many people actively fanning the flames of suspicion, fear, and division. And shootings like this, along with attacks against Jews, Muslims, and others, are among the tragic results. Sadly, there will likely be more.

What disappointed me most was watching some people begin with sympathy… only to immediately pivot into “but…” narratives designed to redirect grief into suspicion and ideological reinforcement.

“But grief isn’t a shield for the leadership of that mosque. And the leadership has a record.”

That kind of framing may appear analytical on the surface, but too often it becomes part of a broader ecosystem of fear amplification and narrative suspicion rather than genuine understanding or healing.

And when I see lines like… “They’re starting to take down my stuff…”

…I recognize something else that has become increasingly common in highly ideological online spaces… persecution itself becomes part of the identity. Moderation becomes “proof” of truth. Pushback becomes validation. Followers begin to feel they are part of an embattled truth-telling movement fighting hidden forces and manipulated narratives.

That dynamic exists across ideologies, religions, and political movements. And it’s dangerous.

And honestly, WHAT WORRIES ME MOST RIGHT NOW… is not Judaism or Islam. It’s the accelerating rise of CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM and the way it is increasingly being embraced, legitimized, and amplified politically, including by the current administration and many seeking power. History has shown us repeatedly what happens when religion, nationalism, grievance, and political power fuse together. That should concern all of us.

We should be finding ways to reduce hate, fear, and dehumanization… not feeding algorithms and outrage cycles that make all of us less safe.

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It’s choosing what deserves to come with you… and what doesn’t.

There’s something powerful about giving yourself permission to pause, to stop long enough to feel what hurts, acknowledge what’s heavy, and take a clear look at what you’ve been carrying, sometimes for far longer than you should have. We don’t talk enough about that moment… that quiet, internal “parting glass” we raise when we finally decide: I’m keeping the lessons, but I’m putting the weight down.

Because letting go isn’t forgetting. It’s filtering. It’s choosing what deserves space in your life and what no longer earns the right to shape your energy, your joy, or your identity. And if you read my post, Hope… The Weight We Carry, the Light We Keep, you know I’ve wrestled with that tension, how hope can both lift you and weigh you down at the same time. It can keep you going, but it can also keep you holding on longer than is healthy. Hope is powerful like that. It tethers you… sometimes to possibility, and sometimes to pain.

I’ve lived that truth in the deepest place a person can feel it… the love I have for my daughters, and the reality of not having them in my life the way I fought so hard to. That love doesn’t fade. It doesn’t weaken. If anything, it grows stronger in the absence. But the weight of holding on, to what could have been, what should have been, what I wish still could be, that’s a different story. That’s the part that can quietly take a toll if you don’t learn how to carry it differently.

And that’s where another truth I’ve written about comes into play… Go Where the Love Is. Not as a rejection, not as giving up, but as a decision. A decision to recognize where love is reciprocated, where it flows, where it’s present in your life right now… and to allow yourself to live there, to breathe there, to grow there. Because staying emotionally anchored only to where love isn’t, even when it matters most, can keep you stuck in a loop that drains more than it gives. That doesn’t mean you stop loving… it means you stop abandoning yourself.

I’ve learned that you can hold two truths at the same time. You can love deeply and still let go of the weight that comes with holding on too tightly. You can carry hope and still release the expectation that it has to resolve the way you once imagined. As I wrote before, “hope can be both crushing and life-giving”… and part of growing is learning which part of that you choose to carry forward.

Because growth doesn’t always come from adding more… more effort, more persistence, more emotional strain. Sometimes growth comes from subtraction… from choosing what stays and having the courage to release what doesn’t. And when you do that, when you let go of just enough weight, something shifts. Clarity comes back, breath returns, and energy follows. You begin to see that letting go is not an ending… it’s an opening.

For me, the love for my daughters will always remain… that is not negotiable. But so is the understanding that I have to keep living my life in the presence of love that is here… not only the love I wish still was. But I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that there is real, present love in my life today… in friends and family who show up, share moments, and remind me that connection is still very much alive. And that matters more than I can ever fully explain. That’s not giving up… that’s choosing to live.

The wisdom isn’t in what we hold onto… it’s in how we decide to carry it.

So here’s to the parting glass. To honoring what mattered. To releasing what weighs us down. And to moving forward with clarity, courage, and the strength to live in what’s real.

Going where the love is isn’t giving up… it’s choosing to live. #TheDadWhoWillAlwaysLove 💙

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What we do with the time AI gives back is what really matters.

Time is our most valuable commodity. And while AI and other technologies can help us complete tasks faster, saving time in itself isn’t the real value. The value only exists if we do something meaningful with the time we get back. If the only outcome is that we squeeze in more work, respond to more emails, or check more boxes, then we haven’t actually gained anything—we’ve just accelerated the treadmill.

And I’ll be the first to say… it’s easier for me to preach this than it is for many others. I’m not in a phase of life where I’m trying to build what’s next… I’m living in what I spent years building. I’m not chasing the future in the same way… I’m experiencing it. That changes your perspective. It gives you the space to value time differently, to see it less as something to optimize and more as something to experience.

➡️ But that doesn’t make the point any less true. ⬅️

Because no matter where you are in your journey, there has to be a moment where saving time stops being about doing more… and starts being about living more. About investing in relationships, in presence, in the things that actually create RE TURN ON RELATIONSHIP… not just Return on Productivity.

Technology can give you efficiency, it can give you speed, t can even give you back hours in your day. But it can’t tell you what those hours are worth. That part is still up to you. And the people who get that right won’t just be more productive… they’ll be living better.

Because time saved only becomes value… when it’s invested in what truly matters. #ReturnOnRelationship #NoLetUp 🙌🏻

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I sometimes think back to my 20s and 30s, even my 40s, and wonder what changed. Back then I would just go. I’d figure things out along the way and worry about the details when they showed up. I remember renting a car in Italy with nothing more than a AAA map, barely speaking the language, and simply driving. If something went wrong, you dealt with it. If you got lost, you asked someone. And somehow those moments often turned into the best parts of the experience.

Like the time in my 20’s when we passed a sign for Orvieto, Italy and decided, on the spot, to check it out (this mention is directed at one person, you know who you are 😘). No research, no plan… just curiosity. And it turned into one of those unexpected highlights you never could have scheduled even if you tried, and will hold in your memory forever.

Or the road trips I’ve taken with John Andrews, many of which we have shared via social media during out trips, where the plan wasn’t really a plan at all. We figured it out as we went. Where to stop, where to eat, where to go next. Those trips weren’t defined by efficiency… they were defined by experience.

Of course, some of the shift probably is age and perspective. As we get older, we tend to calculate risk differently. The unknown can feel less like possibility and more like inconvenience. But the more I think about it, the more I realize the environment around us has changed dramatically. Technology was supposed to make adventure easier. In theory it removes barriers. We have GPS, translation apps, instant reviews, and the ability to research every possible outcome before we ever leave home. And the more I look around, the more I realize this isn’t just happening to those of us who’ve been around a while… it’s shaping how younger generations experience the world from the very start. Yet somehow those same tools can quietly remove the “adventure.”

Instead of enabling spontaneity, they often encourage over-planning. Instead of leaving room for discovery, they nudge us to map everything in advance. Instead of embracing uncertainty, we’re conditioned to expect a smooth, optimized, almost perfect experience. When everything can be pre-planned, measured, and reviewed, it becomes harder to simply wander.

The irony is that the very tools designed to give us confidence may be the same ones making us less willing to step into the unknown.

Looking back, some of the best experiences I’ve had came from moments when I didn’t know exactly what would happen next. The missed turn that led somewhere interesting. The conversation with someone who helped when I was lost. The small surprises that never show up in a travel guide. Adventure used to live in those spaces.

Maybe the challenge today isn’t learning new technology. Maybe it’s remembering when to put it aside long enough to leave a little room for serendipity again. Because letting things happen isn’t just about loosening control… it’s about resisting the systems that quietly try to take it away.

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