I was listening to the Decoder podcast, where Jay Graber (the CEO of Bluesky) was interviewed, and it reminded me of a mental trap that I often fall into. It’s much better now because I detect it a mile away and successfully stop myself fast.
When I start a new project, I devise a grand plan. It all looks perfect in my head, like magic. Then, I deconstruct that grand plan into reality. I call this process first principles reversal. I start stacking ideas on top of ideas, forcing squares into circles until I achieve a Frankensteinian creation.
During this process, I am in awe of myself, in a state of absolute arousal. I’m a genius. Then, when I attempt to build my vision, I realize how complex it will become. Little by little, things start to not make sense, and in the angst of moving forward, I keep adjusting course and forcing pieces of the puzzle into places they do not belong.
After some time, I completely forgot what I was trying to achieve in the first place and created something that makes little sense because there are much simpler solutions that basically accomplish the same thing.
I am not saying saying that this is the case with Jay Graber. I don’t know Jay, and I have never used Bluesky or read through Bluesky’s documentation (who in their right mind would want to read that). Plus, I don’t believe Jay would be hired as CEO of a multimillion-dollar project if that were the case. I am just sharing that I enjoyed listening to the podcast because it reminded me how much better I feel when I stop myself from this mental trap.