That could think of dreaming and getting a glimmer of God
I be dreaming a dream in a thought
That could dream about a thought
That could think about dreaming a dream
Where I can not, where I can not
Less morose and more present
Dwell on my gifts for a second
A moment one solar flare would consume, so I nod
Spin this flammable paper on the film that my life
High flights, inhale the vapor, exhale once and think twice
Eat some shrooms, maybe have a good cry, about you
See some colors, light hang-glide off the moon— Seigfried by Frank Ocean
There is a sort of fetishization in tech — believing you might call out what the future holds for the collective rest of us. The particular manifestation of the thousands of decisions that go into the form of the product in your hand or home. We do this so often that we tend to miss the initial kernels of that which we are claiming to be aware of its future state.
I’m not saying that it isn’t good or useful to have an opinion on where a community, technology, or the world at large might be headed. In fact, I believe it’s incredibly important to have an understanding of cultural waves and machinations. But it’s important to understand the widening cone of future possibility.
We may agree that in 10 years X will be common place. Knowing the proper details of how X might be constructed is impossible. However, on Twitter we see many people build followings by saying very broad things about X that give no actionable insight whatsoever.
Below is a crude representation of the “cone of possibility” I drew for a previous Twitter discussion.
In the present we have a much higher chance of understanding a key detail or two about a particular need or form. And I want to say that that is enough. That’s all you really need. The idea is to stay on that through line drawn in the center of the cone. That comes with a mix of hunches — being pointed in the right direction — plus intense prolonged focus.
Two weeks ago, I was talking to Luca about something I wanted to tackle in a few months. And he slapped me through facetime.
“Reggie, you’re being stupid. You have 5 things to tackle today alone. You have to direct us on some key product questions and you’re telling me about something months away. I don’t care dude.” — it was something to that effect.
The lesson here: walk the line.
The only way we can truly focus is by being here, now.
Sometimes I hate writing about product / business / etc — because often times it comes back to extremely fundamental base understandings. You have limited resources, and your job as the ceo/product leader is to sequence the energy of your team in the most impactful way.
That’s it.
This reminds me that something I believe is incredibly undervalued in early stage product development is strategy. Strategy is about designing focus. Specializing to open the door for flow. This focus, like a game system, compounds one strategic advantage into 5 new potentials of play. In which you are presented with our familiar challenge…
Walking the line.
I don’t do edits really, so excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.
Thanks so much for giving me your attention. I hope it was worth it, if not… unsubscribing will not hurt my feelings, and will give you back time you literally cannot have back.
Much love.
Credits:
1st Image — Midnight Gospel, a Netflix Animated Series
2nd Image — Crude sketch done on my phone
3rd Image — Evan M. Cohen