You can’t build a vision

Great visionaries know better than to try.

Founders are encouraged to think bigger, dream bigger, and change the world. Investors ask about the ten-year roadmap before the company has ten customers. Every pitch deck ends with an enormous market and an even larger ambition.

Ironically, none of history’s great companies were built by executing their original vision.

Many founders have misunderstand what a vision is. They believe it is the product they should build. In reality, it is a vague direction they want to travel.

This seems backwards until you realize that a vision is not a blueprint. It is a compass.

A blueprint describes something that can be built today. A vision describes a future that cannot. Trying to build the destination first is one of the fastest ways to build something nobody wants.

Instead, great founders ask a different question.

“What is the current established working system that I can make a derivative of that points in the right direction”

The distinction sounds subtle, but it changes everything.

SpaceX did not begin by building a city on Mars. It started by trying to build a rocket (in fact buying existing rockets) that could reliably reach orbit and eventually be reused. “Making humanity multiplanetary” was never the first product. It was the reason for building the first product.

Amazon did not launch as the everything store. It sold books because books were one of the easiest retail categories to digitize. Only after mastering logistics, fulfillment, warehousing, recommendations, and customer trust could it expand into everything else. Patience is Bezos’ super power.

Uber did not replace transportation. It simply made hailing a ride easier. The broader transformation of urban mobility emerged from years of iteration after customers had already adopted the first step. And transportation is far from replaced.

Even Apple followed this pattern repeatedly. The Macintosh was not Steve Jobs’ ultimate vision for personal computing. In fact Lisa was a visionary product that failed terribly. The iPod was hardly the invention of portable music. In many respects it was an exceptionally well-executed digital Walkman. Yet it became the foundation for the iPhone, which became the foundation for an ecosystem that Jobs could never have shipped on day one.

There is an uncomfortable lesson hidden inside all of these stories.

Visionaries don’t build their vision.

They build the first stepping stone that reality will allow. They don’t fight the world to manifest their vision to life against all odds. They fight their ego to build what’s possible today. They hope the two will meet one day.

Many founders resist this because it feels like compromise. They worry that solving a smaller problem somehow means thinking smaller. They want to standout and be impressive.

The opposite is true. I am impressed by the success of the unimpressive.

Reducing an ambitious future into something customers will actually buy is one of the hardest acts of product design. It requires sacrificing elegance for momentum, completeness for usefulness, and pride for learning.

Almost anyone can imagine a better future. Make claims of what the future will look like and sell that.

The rare skill is translating that future into something almost disappointingly ordinary, shipping it, learning from reality, and repeating the process until the original vision slowly emerges.

History suggests that this is not the exception.

It is the process.

What You Won’t Do Defines You

We often define ourselves by what we strive to build, the markets we want to enter, the customers we want to serve, and the visions we want to pursue. These are of course necessary, but they are not defining. The deeper source of identity is not what an organization chooses to do. It is what it chooses not to do.

This is uncomfortable because possibility feels like power. A capable team can always imagine another feature, another market, another customer segment, another partnership, another product line. The temptation is especially strong for talented founders because talent creates options, and options create the illusion of progress. The more a team believes it can do, the more vulnerable it becomes to doing too much.

But strategy is not the accumulation of possibility. Strategy is the disciplined rejection of most possibilities.

A company does not become distinct merely by having ambition. Ambition is abundant. What makes a company distinct is the courage to refuse attractive alternatives. The refusal to venture off into yet another direction is what gives a company its shape. It tells the team what matters, tells customers what to expect, and tells the market what the company is willing to sacrifice in order to become itself.

Artist are seen as those that are free to chase their every imagination, but making a 2 hour movie work is painstakingly an act of constraint and commitment. Imagine the push back that comes from wanting to represent a seen so badly that you push the a $10M shot that lasts 10 seconds. Could you commit to it when everything inside and outside your world is saying it is falling apart? What makes art such an inspiring form of achievement is the commitment to see a singular vision though to the end for – well – what some would call “just a little piece of expression”.

Apple is known for going big on marketing and charging a lot for their products. What most don’t see is Apple is a hallmark of restraint. Apple is not simply Apple because it builds computers, phones, operating systems, or services. Anyone can have a vision for a great computer or experience. Apple is Apple because it has historically chosen control over ubiquity. Upgrades over legacy. It has preferred integrated experience over maximum openness. That choice requires saying no to many obvious opportunities: software for every device, infinite customization, broad compatibility at any cost, and the short-term revenue that comes from being everywhere. (In fact, their lack of constraint is what almost put them under early in their growth – but that is a story for others to tell. )

Those refusals are not incidental. They are central to the product. That isn’t to say their decisions are required for success, but making those decisions and sticking to their identity is.

Few would say Microsoft is not successful and they are a very different looking company. For most of its history they made an opposite choice. Its power came from not being tied primarily to its own hardware. Windows and Office became dominant because Microsoft chose scale, backwards compatibility, options via licensing and distribution across a vast ecosystem of machines it did not manufacture. That strategic refusal gave Microsoft its own identity. It was not Apple, and that was the point. Both companies are shaped more by what they refused as by what they pursued.

The same pattern appears in many industries.

A company making a fast car is not merely choosing speed. It is often giving up affordability, mass accessibility, or low-maintenance practicality. A luxury brand is not merely choosing premium materials or elevated design. It is refusing accommodate everyone’s requests – in fact – they hope they are not. A great restaurant is not merely choosing a menu. It is refusing to serve every taste, every trend, and every customer expectation. The strength of the experience comes from the boundaries around it.

Most people know it when they see it, but chaos, disorganization, and what can feel like a lack of brand identity is merely the manifestation of a lack of restraint. Picking your lane is not giving up on a grand vision, it is dedicating your time to a specific outcome; it is an example of discipline. It is the difference between a light and a laser.

Even Costco, which appears on the surface to sell almost everything to everyone, is built on disciplined refusal. Its model depends on giving up selection of a myriad of options for the same product. It carries a limited number of SKUs, uses warehouse-like stores, bulks up on few variation of a product, and optimizes ruthlessly for efficiency and value. It will not take profits that don’t meet within these restraints.

This distinction matters because every “yes” has a cost beyond the immediate work required. Every yes changes the product. Every yes changes the company’s internal logic and dilutes identity.

Yes you can do anything, but no we can’t do everything.

How do we decide that line?

Proving ambition with breadth is how companies lose coherence. Rarely all at once. More often, they lose it through a series of individually reasonable expansions. One more feature. One more customer type. One more exception. One more “strategic” partnership. One more “why not?” One more compromise that seems harmless in isolation but slowly erodes the original center of gravity.

The problem is not that expansion is bad. Growth often requires expansion. The problem is having expansion without a theory of refusal. An investor without a thesis is throwing money around. Even if they make wins it is not a story they can sell, and without that sale there is no fund.

Without a clear understanding of what the company will not do, growth becomes drift. The company may get bigger, but it does not necessarily get stronger. It gains surface area while losing definition.

This is why the question “What are we building?” must be paired with a harder question: “What will we never build?”

What customer will we not serve?

What feature will we not add?

What revenue will we walk away from?

What behavior will we not reward?

What pressure will we not yield to, even when yielding would make the quarter easier?

What do we cut?

As the great quote says: I don’t sculpt stone into what it should look like, I chip away all the stone that isn’t.

For founders, this discipline is especially important because early companies are fragile systems. A young company has limited time, limited attention, and limited resources. You are ALWAYS stealing from Peter to pay Paul – you can’t pay both.

With AI the lack of constraints required is the very dirt founder can now bury themselves in ten-times over. A product cannot afford to become many things at once – even if it is able to. The founder’s job is not merely to inspire motion. It is to protect the company from compounding motion it can not manage. By being weighed down by its options.

In this sense, refusal is not negativity. It is not small thinking. It is not fear. It is not the lack of vision. It is the architecture of commitment. Vision may be the destination, but focus is not blowing all your travel money on the first stop. It is not getting married on the first date.

To choose anything seriously you must give up many other things. The stronger the choice, the stronger the refusals required to preserve it. This is true for products, brands, companies, and creative lives. You do not become distinct by remaining available to every possibility. You become distinct by rejecting most of them with enough conviction that the few remaining possibilities can be pursued deeply.

The world does not suffer from a shortage of people willing to add more. It suffers from a shortage of people willing to define what must be left out. That is where real strategy begins.

Keep It Right-But-Light

A clearer standard for building well

Most builders have inherited a bad vocabulary for early product work.

We tell people to build an MVP, but the phrase has become so overused that it often clarifies less than it confuses. Some people hear “minimum” and interpret it as permission to ship something brittle, awkward, or barely usable. Others hear “viable” and inflate the work into a miniature production system, complete with abstractions, infrastructure, tests, edge-case handling, and design polish that may never matter.

To balance that out we encourage people to “just hack it together,” which pushes the pendulum into a different problem. Hacky can be useful when it means fast, practical, and unconcerned with unnecessary ceremony. But hacky too often becomes an excuse for bad work. It works in the narrowest technical sense, but some see it as license to create terrible unpleasant use, error laden, difficult to understand, and fragile the moment reality touches it.

This is the gap “right-but-light” is meant to name.

Right-but-light means building something correctly enough that it earns trust, while keeping it light enough that it remains easy to change. It is not about doing less work. It is about refusing to carry more weight than the moment requires. It isn’t minimal or maximal. It is that harmonious balance so many folks have trouble finding. We don’t hack down the scope to get away with a bad implementation, we do it so the one thing we choose to do is done well – while still not evergreen or perfect.

The “right” part matters because users do not experience your product through your intentions. They experience it through the surface area you give them. A button that is twice as large as it should be may not break the system, but it may still signal that your offering is dangerously unkempt. A workflow that technically completes the task but makes the user think too hard won’t get used – at all. A prototype that loses data, hides errors, or makes the user feel unsure doesn’t give you the real signals you are looking for. These things may be excusable in a throwaway 24-hour hack-a-thon demo, but they are not balanced for an initial product seedling. They train the builder, the user, and the team to tolerate roughness where clarity was needed.

The “light” part matters because early certainty is usually fake. At the beginning of a product, most of the important learning still has to happen. The shape of the problem will change. The user may care about a different part of the workflow than expected. The thing you thought was a feature may turn out to be a demo path. The thing you thought was temporary may become the center of the product. In that environment, heavy architecture is often a liability disguised as discipline and thoughfulness.

A right-but-light implementation avoids both forms of waste. It does not ignore usability in the name of speed, and it does not overbuild permanence into something that has not yet earned permanence.

This distinction has become more important with agents. Human teams already struggled with the nuance between fast and sloppy, or thoughtful and overbuilt. Agents amplify that ambiguity. Ask an agent to “build an MVP” and it may produce a sprawling approximation of a real application. Ask it to “make it hacky” and it may skip the very details that make the product usable. The instruction was vague, so the output becomes a coin flip between underbuilt and overbuilt.

“Keep it right-but-light” is a better constraint because it tells both the human and the agent what kind of tradeoff is being made. The work should be correct in the parts that matter. The interface should be understandable. The happy path should feel intentional. The data should not vanish. The user should not have to forgive the product in order to use it.

But the implementation should remain light. Maybe the data lives in a JSON file before it earns a database. Maybe the workflow is hardcoded before it earns configurability. Maybe the UI uses an existing design pattern rather than inventing a new system. Maybe the feature does not need role-based permissions, event streams, audit trails, background jobs, and a full settings page on day one. Maybe the right version is simply the smallest version that behaves with taste.

Right-but-light also gives teams a cleaner stopping rule. The question is not “is this complete?” because early products are almost never complete. The better question is: “Is this right enough to learn from, and light enough to change after we learn?”

That question changes the conversation. It moves the team away from false binaries. You are no longer choosing between a disposable hack and a production-grade system. You are choosing the minimum level of correctness required for meaningful use, and the minimum level of structure required for responsible iteration. Yes, that is what MVP and lean startup. It is just that I have tried for YEARS to explain that to people and it either doesn’t land or get me in to trouble with “you said to do the minimum!”

For example, a right-but-light onboarding flow may not need analytics dashboards, branching personalization, enterprise configuration, and a polished admin panel. But it probably does need clear copy, coherent visual hierarchy, a reset path for testing, and enough state handling that the user does not get trapped. A right-but-light internal tool may not need a formal database schema or complex permissions. But it probably does need predictable inputs, readable outputs, and error states that do not require the builder to stand nearby and explain what went wrong.

There are many great product folks out there building things you love, and I am sure you have used a product you loved and realized there was no delete button and wonders “WTF? Why can’t I delete?!”. If you get a req for your unaware peers in different departments they would have died on the sword to put the obviousl “delete” in on v1, but no feature is truly “simple” and without a time cost. So, that product manager says “they need to love what they create before they need to delete.” One less unit of time for one side of the product, one extra unit of time for another. No one has infinite time or infinite money. No one.

So how do you chose? The point is not to lower standards. It is to place the standard in the right part of the work and be okay with walking away from the other.

Long-lasting applications deserve robustness, scalability, observability, automated tests, security reviews, edge-case handling, and design precision. But not every early feature has earned that full burden yet.

Premature permanence slows learning. It turns every change into a negotiation with yesterday’s assumptions.

Speed without standards is not iteration. It is motion. Wheels spinning fast in the mud.

It asks for seriousness without heaviness. It asks for speed without sloppiness. It asks for taste without vanity. It asks the builder to cut everything that is not required, while doing the remaining things with care.

That is the deeper meaning of the phrase.

Right-but-light is not another way to say MVP. It is a correction to what MVP has become. It restores the part people forgot when “agile” and “MVP” became a household term.

Can You, Did You, and Taste

Three stages separate ideas from products, and products from things people love.

The first stage is capability.

Can it be done? Can the software be written? Can the company be started? Can the product be built? Can the problem be solved?

These questions matter because capability is the foundation upon which everything else rests. Nothing can be executed, adopted, or admired until it is first plausible.

This is where most people rest comfortably.

The surprising thing about capability is that proving something can be done often provides many of the same emotional rewards as actually doing it. Once someone becomes convinced they could build the company, write the book, get in shape, learn the skill, or launch the product, the pressure largely disappears. Potential becomes a source of comfort.

The entrepreneur enjoys imagining the startup. The author enjoys discussing the book. The engineer enjoys architecting the system. The athlete enjoys knowing they could get serious whenever they decide the time is right. People tend to love their own brains and marvel at what it can achieve. Potential is attractive because it is free from accountability. It cannot fail because it does not yet exist.

Did you actually do it?

The second stage is execution. It only lives in the past tense. This is where the conversation changes. Ideas become products. Plans become companies. Discussions become outcomes. Concepts become features available for use and critique to the public domain. The world stops evaluating intentions and starts evaluating evidence.

A customer cannot buy potential. A user cannot interact with ambition. An investor cannot generate returns from possibility alone (though they push this rule as much as possible). The market, unlike our friends and colleagues, is remarkably indifferent to what could have happened. It only responds to what did happen.

People who reach this stage deserve significant credit. The distance between an idea and reality is far larger than most people appreciate. Building something that survives contact with the real world is difficult. Something complete, end-to-end. It accomplishes its intend (big or small) and no hand holding or excuses are needed for it to be used properly. Launching is difficult. Selling is difficult. Maintaining momentum is difficult.

Most people never get there. And I am being generous with “most”.

Yet many who do arrive at execution mistakenly believe they have reached the finish line. They assume that because something works, people will care. They assume that because a solution is objectively better, adoption will naturally follow. They assume that utility alone is enough. They believe a logical use case exists and therefore usage will follow. A good plan and execution is all that is needed.

History suggests otherwise.

The graveyard of technology is filled with products that worked. Many were faster than their competitors. Many were technically superior. Some were years ahead of their time. Their failure was not one of engineering. Their failure was assuming that human beings make decisions primarily through logic.

Taste.

Taste is one of the most misunderstood concepts in business because it is often reduced to aesthetics. People hear the word and think about typography, color palettes, industrial design, architecture, or fashion. Those things matter, but they are only symptoms of something deeper.

Taste is the ability to understand how another human being will experience what you have created.

It is the recognition that people do not merely consume functionality. They consume stories, emotions, identity, aspiration, status, trust, culture, and delight. A chair is not simply somewhere to sit. A restaurant is not merely a place to eat. A home is not simply shelter. A product is not just a collection of features. Even a purposefully poort taste for those that are tasteless is, in fact, a taste. The trickle down story line of decisions and focused intent lead to those that have the same test to become interested. Taste is not being fashionable, it is knowing people need clothes and certain groups of people like cheap clothes, some like expensive clothes, and some like expensive clothes that are on sale – but they know which group of tasters they want to have.

Every meaningful creation eventually becomes an experience.

This is why two products with nearly identical functionality can produce radically different outcomes. One becomes beloved while the other is forgotten. One creates a movement while the other creates a user base. One becomes part of a person’s identity while the other remains a tool.

The difference is often explained by taste.

The creators who understand taste recognize that presentation is part of the product. Storytelling is part of the product. Culture is part of the product. The emotional experience surrounding something is not separate from what is being built. It is one of the things being built.

Most people spend their lives asking whether something can be done. A much smaller group proves that it can. The rarest creators understand that neither capability nor execution guarantees significance.

The first stage asks whether something is possible.

The second proves that it is.

The third determines whether anyone cares.

Don’t sell the sale

Being on either end of a sales call can be tricky. The aim is to either engage with potential customers and sell, or for a buyer, get the transparency needed and end with the best bang-for-the-buck. One of the most effective strategies adopts the “simple” art of not talking. It may sound easy, but the drive to make conversation is deeply embedded in our culture. Filling space, or finding it awkward to rest in open space, can push us further from our goal. There are a few simple ways you can remember to avoid falling into conversational land mines that work against your best interests.

Selling the Sale

The first example of this mistake is described by my group of friends as “selling the sale”. One of us will try to convince the other to take part in an activity. Say, you want to convince your friends to go on a ski trip. On the call you get through the first couple reasons you’ve prepared to convince them. Your friends unexpectedly agree. But, you are so excited to present the rest of your “great reasons” that you continue on. Even after they have agreed, you continue pitching the idea. In that moment you may hear my group call you out: “Hey man, I said yes. Don’t sell the sale”. Why do my friends call this moment out? Well, once a person says “yes” they are “in”, anything else out of your mouth can only work against you. You have gone from summiting a mountain of agreement to barreling down a hill filled with land mines. In short, once an agreement is reach – Don’t sell the sale and create opportunity to lose the ground you’ve gained. Don’t forget that your goal is to convince them, not show them how great of a sales pitch you can make. In other words, don’t sell the sale, sell the product.

Silence is Powerful

Another advantage of creating space in a conversation is humans have a bias to assume silence means “disagreement.” It means no such thing. For example, I was once on a call with a vendor. The sales rep ended their pitch and gave me their price. I said nothing. Honestly, I had no idea if it was expensive or not. Moments later I heard “…but we can do cheaper if that’s too high.”

I have seen this uncomfortable silence change rates, contracts, and features with not so much as a whisper.

Literally.

By allowing statements to sit – and breath – you allow the other person to find time to air out what is running through their mind, be it doubt, logic, or ethics. At the end of their thought process they may realize their asking price is too high, for example, or their proposed agreement is too strict as their conscience felt icky once the words left their mouth and they wish they could take it back. This approach can sound like a silly game, but it is not. It is simply allowing non-verbal communication to fast-forward any snake oil quips or rehearsed phrases. It allows the party to turn their asks into a discussion. Best of all, it required very little added effort from you.

Invest

Finally, while I haven’t researched it, I have found in practice that giving a person space to speak creates a sense of comfort. They remember the experience having went well.

Whether it be by building rapport, establishing a connection, and creating a sense of trust and collaboration, you can make your goals on a call much more achievable by practicing the art of silence. The next time you are on a call, try to allow for longer gaps of silence and see the difference it can make.

“We all have a comfort zone, a learning zone, and a panic zone.Aim toward the outer edges of the learning zone. While you don’t want to panic, you’ll grow the most when you’re past your comfort zone and stretch yourself to learn something new.”

– Lev Vygotsky

Finding hidden talents lost to your childhood

The reason why I suck at writing, hate reading and have never been able to pick up languages – and how I proved myself wrong.

I’m sitting in my dimly-lit, third-grade classroom. My mom and I are sitting in hard, vibrantly-colored, plastic chairs. My English teacher, who is sitting across from us, is your typical sweet southern grandma, until she opens her mouth.

“I know I’m not supposed to say it,” she says anyway, from her wrinkled, fuzz-covered lips, “but, if I were you, I’d go home and give him a good spanking.”

I don’t know if my mom nodded, ignored it, or what came after, other than the feeling of betrayal from my teacher, mom, and the educational system. I wasn’t a bad kid or bully. This discussion wasn’t the result of my lobbing spitballs. This was Mrs. Manard’s solution to my “C” level performance.

Looking back, I tried to do the things required to excel in school but, try as I might, I couldn’t do them the way I was supposed to. I disliked the slow pace of English class and reading large books that seemed irrelevant to my life. I already knew how to read, write, and speak. Knowing the rules as to why one should never end a sentence with a preposition felt unimportant.

Without knowing it, Mrs. Manard redirected my educational trajectory, and, by 10 years old, I decided, “I suck at English.”

My foreign language class wasn’t much different. Aside from having a much nicer teacher, I didn’t do well memorizing all the rules. There was no satisfaction in the months of repetition required to eventually say, “Your cow is fat.”

I had another epiphany at 12 years old. I was never going to be able to pick up new languages.

——————————————————————————————

Some stories, like mine above, become obsolete in adulthood, but never get a makeover.

Being a “bad speller,” “bad at math,” or “not being witty” are a few examples of stories you may have calcified during childhood. They are either told to us, beat into us, or remnants of unwanted consequences we had to endure.

These stories are as relevant to us now as a favorite toy or blanky. They are anchors that swaddle us in chains, leaving us comfortably limited. We see these features as foregone conclusions, but, somehow, we are unable to remember when these features formed or when we last questioned them.

Maybe it’s time to update our stories.

The story above is part of my history. It made me who I am today. But, it’s based on old experiences and, therefore, outdated.

If a 10-year-old kid walked up to me now and told me how to live my life, I would think it was a joke. Yet, somehow, my 10-year-old self is still telling me how to respond to my environment.

I can’t continue to rationalize this logic. It is time to update my stories and make them more relevant to my current environment, social circles, and interests. It’s not about changing who I am, but ensuring I am not limited to who I thought I once was.

Like the rest of the world, the isolation of COVID provided me with an opportunity to pause, reflect, and assess. An opportunity to dissolve the negative assessments of my capabilities. This simple reframing immediately altered my perspective. I went from reasserting my shortcomings out of habit to searching for ways to reexamine them.

Take languages, for example. Soon after I took this new approach, I caught myself responding to the question, “Do you speak any other languages?” with a canned, “I am good with learning software languages, but have never been able to grasp foreign ones.”

The first time I used that response was in high school. High school?! It has been a reflex, hidden, very literally, under my nose for decades.

I decided to test the theory. I began looking for language apps. If one didn’t suit me, I tried another. I found groups at work that were studying languages (turns out a lot). I Googled hacks to learn languages quickly. I found platforms that connect users to native speakers around the world, so they could learn for pennies on the dollar. I kept what I liked and threw out what didn’t work for me.

A year later, I’m speaking French and Spanish at an Intermediate level. I now see the world in a new light. Like a veil being lifted around me, I now recognize the lyrics of foreign songs, follow dialogue in foreign flicks, and eavesdrop on tourists at my local coffee shop. I didn’t just learn languages. By challenging my old thinking, and with little effort, I illuminated a new world.

Enthused by the results of this formula, I applied it to my “sucking at English” and so many other false truths weighing me down over the years.

Through this experience, I had an epiphany: Maybe, I have always loved English and languages. Maybe, I just hated a few child classes that unfortunately bound me to a false narrative.

Let’s close the book on these old narratives and make room for a new, liberating reality.

**Redefining your reality**

Introspection is paramount in discovering and redefining outdated stories.I had to catch myself repeating old facts to others, and then determine whether it is outdated.

That’s your clue.

Then, reset and re-create that truth from scratch.

Catch yourself. When you hear yourself assertively self-deprecating what you’re capable of, replace it with, “I haven’t taken time to be good at it.”
Step back and see if you can pinpoint when you formed that opinion. Who were you then? Is it possible you’ve evolved in other ways since then? Are the issues that blocked you still present now?
Cut out what’s no longer serving you. Do you spend hours on the phone or TV? Maybe cooking everyday is a burden and ordering out once a week removes it. Can you trade a day, hour, or activity to investigate this question? Maybe block your work calendar for 30 mins, one day a week, or add an activity to your wake-up or sleep ritual. Maybe you mow the lawn one fewer time a month, and it grows just a bit longer. These are a few trade-offs you can make to open yourself up to new possibilities. Personally, I deleted all my social apps and replaced them with Duolingo.
Chose one thing from #1 and start researching ways to engage it for a few minutes gained in #2.
Give it 6 months and see if your story changes.

From a writing hater, to a writing lover

Where the hatred started

Writing has never been easy for me. It isn’t for a lack of wanting. My experience in school wasn’t helpful.

Since I can remember, I yearned for the ability to get all my thoughts, observations and theories onto paper. My hands just couldn’t keep up. When I took a shot at writing quickly, the results were illegible. When I took the time to write cleanly, the thoughts would slip through my fingers.

I couldn’t strike a balance and wasn’t willing to push through the torture of building skill through the slow, methodical, practice of writing and rewriting my ABCs. I neither had the penmanship nor the patience. And, with that, I could only assume writing wasn’t my thing.

This frustration as a child turned into a hatred toward writing, and that hatred turned into avoidance.

I slogged through school and found creative ways around my poor penmanship. It’s not like I didn’t love other art forms, but putting pen to paper felt dull, overly academic, and unimportant. I didn’t see how writing could have the same beauty and value as a Picasso, or express the emotions of a Rachmaninov.

In an adolescent, cool-guy way, I would take a sort of pride in “not being a writer.” Or, I’d say, “I’m good at other things — how about you write it up?” It was easier to do than admit I was bad at it. The way most children respond when they try to justify a lack of skill in some area.

That became my story. And it was left unedited for decades.

Along the way, with the advent of the computer, I thought I was saved. I was one of the lucky ones where writing by hand became obsolete in my lifetime. Good riddance. I could finally leave handwriting in the rearview.

Once I was out of school and gaining balance in the real world, I took another crack at writing. Now that writing by hand was no longer a blocker, and spelling and grammar was managed by machines, maybe I could become a writer after all.

Confronting what I now realize are years of excuses, I decided writing would no longer be a weakness in my armament of tools. It was time to revise my story. Since then, I’ve had a lot of catching up to do.

Okay, let’s try that again

In my 20s, when I started my first company, I realized the power of the written word. In order to communicate a vision at scale, one must codify their thoughts so others may follow. In order to improve, I started a blog and set out to post daily for a year. While I evolved considerably from my first post to my last, I still had a long way to go.

Years later, after hitting a plateau and going on hiatus, I decided to hire a writing coach. She swore by the power of “morning pages” laid out in the book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. In it, the author believes one must return to the written form to connect with one’s inner artist. My new teacher passed on that requirement to me, and with it, I had come full circle. In order to learn to be a writer, I had to once again slog through my pitiful excuse of penmanship.

What surprised me about this go around was, for the first time, this teacher told me she didn’t care about how my writing looked or what it said. To her, none of that was important. She just wanted me to use my hand to write — anything. As long as paper and pencil were involved, she’d be happy.

It was — freeing.

It shut down the overly critical side of my brain, further imprisoned by early schooling.

I had a second wind.

I began to write in my notepad, about nothing, for five minutes a day. Through aches in my fingers, and in spite of all my ideas vanishing right as I picked up my pencil, I followed the prescription. I planted notebooks, pencils and sharpeners around the house, so nothing could get in the way when the compulsion to write struck. At times, when I had nothing to say, I would scribble some variation of, “I am writing this even though I can’t think of anything so that I don’t stop writing until my time is up.”

After a few weeks, I could see a connection forming between my hand and my mind. Where thoughts used to swirl around in my head and go nowhere, now they had an exit route. I developed a pavlovian reaction to search for paper when the marble in my head began to rattle. And, unlike the brevity of notes I took on my phone or computer, I found my handwritten entries getting longer at each session.

The potential was certainly there, but I still had one issue to overcome: I couldn’t read any of it.

Tech to the rescue

I’m a gadget guy. And, I’ve used my affinity toward doodads as a mental hack, tricking my mind to focus on important things I need to do that I have no interest in doing otherwise. Sure, I could vacuum and begrudgingly roll over the carpets while wishing I was doing anything else, but I prefer to get a Roomba, configure it, and whistle while it works.

“Hold on!” I thought one night, staring at my pad and pencil, mustering the strength to start yet another writing session. “Can this trick help solve my aversion to writing? If a pencil and paper is a painful reprise to teenage angst, modernizing my workbench with A.I. apps that digitize hand-written text via an iPad and Apple Pencil is a different beast entirely.”

I can get behind this.

I scoured the app store for apps that could recognize my chicken scratch, while providing the right amount of tech-nerdiness to put a spoonful of sugar into my writing regiment.

I knew I found “the one” with Nebo.

The app perfectly merged modern digital tech with old-school writing and I found myself looking forward to engaging with the experience. I went from being forced to do “morning pages” each day, to feeling like I couldn’t stop journaling, writing or editing my work. What started as a few sentences a day has now blossomed into pages. In fact, this very text is being tapped out on my iPad using my Apple Pencil while laying in bed at 11:14PM with my wife asleep beside me, and I am having trouble stopping.

Whether one considers me a writer or not is unimportant, for I have fallen in love with writing, and with it my story has finally been rewritten.

Biohacking: The Iceman Runneth

Ever heard of Wim Wof? If not, take a minute to Google him. What you’ll find will garner a few reactions. First, amazement as you watch videos of him climbing K1 or Everest in just his skivvies. Maybe, a feeling of disbelief when the Dutchman characterizes his extraordinary feats as simply an act of “mind-over-matter”.

What really perked my ears, however, was the Vice episode I came across that reported how science has been able to not only prove his ability to “focus and breathe” his way into recovery from an injection of a viral disease, but also an ability to teach his others how to harness the same powers. By being repeatable and very much teachable, I thought, “Hey, maybe this Iceman guy and process is legit.”

While watching the Vice episode, I caught a short glimpse of Wim teaching the correspondent a breathing lesson that is supposed to trigger an adrenaline response that will keep them warm when they take a swim in the frigid Amsterdam waters. I caught, “breath deeply longer than you breathe out.”

That stuck with me.

I wouldn’t call myself a runner. At my peak running condition a few years back, I ran a 5K once or twice. I haven’t run much since, and, lately, when I’ve gone for a jog, I’d clocked myself around a 10″ mile. It isn’t an easy run either.

Shortly after I saw the Vice episode on Wim Wof, I went for a jog with my buddy Vishal. He is a far better runner than I, running marathons in the past. He always dusts me on the last leg of our jogs, proving just how much he holds back in the beginning. For some reason, the thought of Wim’s breathing method and how it spikes one’s adrenaline came to mind.

I started to breathe in deep – hold – and breathe out quickly; repeat. A minute later, Vishal began to slow down.

Soon I realized that he wasn’t slowing down at all, but, in fact, I was speeding up. It was happening effortless to boot. My lungs felt like they were stretching beyond comfort, but I wasn’t out of breath. My legs didn’t feel like they were moving any faster – I felt like I was gliding. It was a wonderful feeling. By the time I stopped, Vishal was a block or so behind and he said it was odd. That seemed to start pulling away in front but that I didn’t look like I was even trying hard.

I explained the story of the Iceman and the breathing I used and a week later, he told me that he used the same technique and he went from a 9min mile, to a 7min mile in a matter of a couple days.

Again, just like the Vice episode I saw, the process is repeatable, teachable and the results are amazing. The Iceman now runneth.

I’m not sure whether it is simply a question of focus spawned my my focus on breathing, or if I am in fact manipulating my physiology through a control of my adrenaline, like the Iceman claims to do. But One thing is for sure, I have found a new way to run and I am loving it!

Attention Deficit or Boredom Adverse

“Back when I was a kid we had far greater attention spans!” Well, whoopy-doo for you.

Youtube, TV, Commercials, Audio books and Facebook. The list of products that drive us into a pattern of ingesting only short-blips of information goes on and on. Some believe the consequence is a loss in our ability to pay attention to any lengthy (more traditional) format, and in their mind, anything of real value.

I take issue with that belief entirely. I’d rather ask this: Why is there a requirement to be able to pay attention to long-duration formated info in the first place, and what makes that info so much more valuable? Isn’t the goal of listening, reading, or watching information to comprehend it? Where does “length” and “staying still” play into that requirement?

As a kid people thought I had attention problems. I had tons of energy and not enough places to put it all, especially during school hours. Reading one long-ass book (that I had no interest in) for a class (I didn’t care much about) was not very motivating; I perceived writing in much the same way. Needless to say, I didn’t accel in those areas much.

For me, learning was just that — learning. It wasn’t a proof of my ability to sit still and do nothing for a long period of time, or to impress a teacher. Learning was all about answering questions, digging into things that interested me, and unraveling things that confused me. When the internet became “a thing”, I found myself ingesting tons of information daily, and it allowed me to pursue those questions with ease.

Fast forward a couple decades and I’m sitting here auditing an edX class at 2x-speed. I’ve skipped over a few sections that do nothing more than set the audience up for what’s coming (e.g. Boring. I get it. Let’s move on). And you know what? I love it — I love taking classes! As for reading, In this new environment of self-paced, kindle-based, materials I’ve found myself reading more books than I ever had in highschool. Even writing has become interesting to me. I started a blog 7-years ago to become a better writer, and, over 200 posts later, I’d like to think I have improved quite a bit. With all this interest in taking classes, reading, and writing, I have to ask myself: do I have an attention problem, or am I just terribly adverse to boredom (and the old, slow-moving, teaching styles)? Which led me to ask, why the hell would anyone want to be great at being bored in the first place?!

As our technology pushes us into a new format of learning, maybe it is less about “shut up and sit still”, and more about, “here is the world — have at it!”

It’s easy to think the world is getting dumber. We see “views” on YouTube of someone getting hit in the nuts soar into the millions, and people with obnoxious (or useless) things to say use social platforms to say them at scale. It is important to remember that with or without these new mediums people have been dumb for a long time. It is also important to keep in mind that the speed of advancements in technology are increasing exponentially. Those advancements push social media, but they also cut the time it takes to roast a turkey, pop popcorn, and provide classes to people like me that can now learn more efficiently than they ever have before.

I think learning was built on an extremely inefficient foundation because we didn’t have any other way to do it. Now, we are finally trimming the fat. The problem is, our kids are now able to eat lean beef but we are insisting that they still must chew the lard first. Why?

I say, take those little bits of data, re-arrange them, pause them, and fast-forward them as you wish. Let your curiosity for answers be the guide, not a demonstration in formalities.

We aren’t losing the art of education, we are deconstructing it and reassembling it through the gift of technology. The world has started to suit everyone’s individual pace, interest, and schedule. All the lost hours of dramatic pauses, introductions, segues or fluff are gained in the hours we can instead paint, exercise — or better yet — learn something entirely different.

Sure, it may mean that listening to a 1-hour speech at work will be more difficult for a person that is used to this newer, more efficient medium — but who’s fault is that? Why the hell are people talking for an hour anyway?! Is it necessary to achieve their objective? Are we simply committed to a style of interaction in the real world for no other reason than our attachment to tradition? Are we simply not yet ready to embrace a more efficient style of information-sharing that the digital world has built from the ground up? If you are looking for art and style, maybe you should go see a play.

As we move away from requiring our audience to sit down and shut up for an extended periods of time, let’s keep our goals in mind. We are not here to prove to others that we can sit through something that does not excite us, but to find out what does. It is not to prove we can endure boredom, but to break the shackles that required us to be bored in order to learn. It is time that we agreed to fight boredom, and recognize it as an old, outdated, emotion.