The friction tax isn’t the work. It’s the re-reading. It’s remembering what state this thing was in. It’s digging through Slack to find what Daniel said on Tuesday. Every item that lands on you without a type, a status, and a next action charges rent on your attention, every time you look at the pile.
GTD (Getting Things Done) was Ontology engineering in disguise.
Inbox • Next Action • Waiting-On • Someday/Maybe
A tiny schema (type, status, due date) enforced by hand with paper and folders. It works because the structure does the thinking for you. It breaks because humans are slow, bored parsers, and the pile never stops growing.
AI removes the tax on producing structure. It does not remove the need for it. The leverage isn’t in better chat. It’s in letting the model turn your unstructured inputs into typed objects the moment it lands, so every downstream question becomes a filter instead of a re-read.
Every org running on unstructured exhaust is paying this tax, every hour, and has been paying it forever. Until now it was just the cost of work. Now it’s a choice.