Mental Modeling

Sequencing

When an audience feels informed, confidence increases and the opportunity for lasting collaboration is refined. Perhaps everything is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetition and order matters?

Understanding how everything connects is impossible for even the most methodical mind. Be it system thinking, design thinking, meta synthesis, neural networking, or whatever mindset you choose, the abstract intensity of complexity makes it hard to see how a few things relate, let alone immeasurable members in infinite streams.

Machines add computed awareness. But the squishy nature of each member within a sequence feels like it will remain a futile enigma, forever transforming based on if, who, what, when, where, why, and how something is being observed.

The processing power required to source the connection(s) of every moment would paralyze your thoughts. The mind is effective, thanks to sequenced memories and staying light enough to deduce answers with limited real-time input. This saves time, but it’s interesting how this type of internal sequencing actually quiets the depth of each sequence.

Enjoy the moment and be a serendipitist but keep tabs on where each member fits into a sequence.How sequences are pieced together keeps strategies in harmony. This brews appreciation from the past and adds a lightness for the moment. Delivering less information gives people only what they need when they need it. Added depth can then arrive down string to make a timelier impact.

Brewed From Within - Layers of Understanding

Layers of Understanding

As a sequenced narrative stretches, depth that rhymes will meet people where they’re at and more effectively guide the curious through new layers of understanding.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Feedback is Data

Customer discovery paves the path to profitability.

This really is the work for entrepreneurs starting a new business. Customer discovery requires trust in your early moves, obsessive curiosity, patience, thick skin, humility, an interest in being wrong, discernment, and a willingness to adapt. No problem, right?

For many entrepreneurs, impartial feedback can be scary. Customer discovery puts ideas on the hook, and colliding new conversations may contradict past assumptions. That’s the point! Interacting with the market you seek to serve allows us to learn from no in a way that gets us to yes.

As you collaborate with those who criticize what you’re building, learn why naysayers debate your hypotheses. Be humble. Either attack the massive lift to change the product and even the target customer or make your concept more compelling to win over those who care.

The more you learn from others, the more you’ll recognize supply and be able to meet true demand. Collecting real-world data is human and intellectual capital that attracts more network and financial capital. 

Beyond the psychology of it all, customer discovery can feel like a drag because it is often a protracted process. The time commitment is real. This market exploration can be slow at first and may seem less necessary as signals of traction emerge. The potential need to rethink ideas makes feedback scary too. As always, if the entrepreneurial lifestyle was easy, career nirvana would not be so fleeting. Knowing this, we can seek honest feedback that strengthens our value proposition to eventually go further in the right direction.

When learning from the perspective of others, it’s imperative to remember that feedback is data.

Collect, organize, and examine data from feedback like a scientist. Inference is more informed with data. Decisions that are made become more in tune with reality as you continue to collect and learn with data.

As you translate decisions into action, you must also find your own way. Even with good intent, people who provide you with feedback are doing so based on their experience. The experience of others is based on their own past, and no feedback is likely to fully harmonize with your vision. There are many ways to navigate the idea maze. Gather feedback like power-ups in a video game and use diversified data to guide your quest toward product-market fit.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Oversubscribed

It’s a go-go world of busy, busy, busy.

With days scheduled from start to finish, what time is left for random acts of conspicuous kindness, welcoming serendipity, or just saying yes to more adventure?

Thoughtful preparation is often required to coordinate whatever it may be. There’s value in staying organized, but over planning is a trap. The thirst for productivity has made busy look to be successful. How often do we hear pride disguised as disgust, as someone complains about the constrictions of their frantic calendar? Yes, prerequisites include boundless hard work, a healthy obsession, and endless sequencing to be remarkable, but unexpected opportunities emerge when we’re not captive to a calendar.

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Planning is based in fear.

Doing is based in success.

Renting time can be lucrative, but in our connected era, there are ways to efficiently get things done without falling victim to a stacked routine of back-to-back everything.

Meetings led by talking heads, fracturing lunch affairs, and youth sports are all common versions of this trap. Each activity is cool, but when combined, days are booked and every night has something. A few hacks for each include less scheduled meetings throughout the week, but an eagerness to meet anytime. Instead of lunch, meet folks for a brew on either side of the day and consider more adventurous ways to share time. Audibles include parlaying a first meeting with an event, going for a walk and talk, or adding nature into the interaction. This breaks routine and conversations can be more provocative as a shared encounter adds depth to any relationship. Lastly, appreciate limitless play, but organized sports will not define a child’s future. In fact, it more commonly limits the experiences a family enjoys together. The entire game resets at puberty and even at high levels, the idea that sports provide a lasting future is one of society’s biggest fallacies. Organized sports deliver camaraderie, fitness, teamwork, loyalty, problem solving, business opportunities, and a competitive rush, but camps provide these benefits with less time and cost required.

Comfort without a plan leaves space for the unexpected. Things will not always come together, but if the calendar is a tool to keep promises while staying quietly organized, complacency gets replaced with unplanned marvel. If you feel oversubscribed, try flying without a plan. May the voids filled with no agenda unravel a freedom to be your best.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Horizons

From the ground, our view to the horizon is 3 miles. Peering atop the highest observation deck in the United States, humans can see up to 50 miles on a clear day.

While the foreground of daily activity occupies so much attention, our cumulative culture has always looked to the edge for answers. Whether it’s cresting through the clouds on a flight, that inspiring view from any rooftop, or the simple pleasure of walks around the neighborhood, we love the hope-filled distance of any view. Beyond these moments of beauty, how can we think about edges as we keep building?

Action is obviously required, but staying wild and thinking BIG takes practice. Busy can be addictive and the close proximity to how time is spent makes everything feel pressing. The closer the deadline, the more attention it’s given. Keep the promise of what you’re building, but finding time to think is a mental exercise that nurtures gratitude and often attracts fresh opportunities.

To avoid self limitation, collide ideas into more weird conversations. We can chat with anyone online, so leverage our connected era, but then pour in the serendipity! Show up and with your own eyes, get interested.

As boundaries come and go, avoid where the sidewalk ends and there’s no need to always be first in line. Skyline views await us all from anywhere. Build like this. Linchpins go beyond brainstorming and instead, edgecraft ideas toward reality. Lean into Playforce Principles and continue to ship on the timeline of now. Along with that prerequisite, stay open to next and feel different momentums converging toward that next horizon.

No matter how you get there, the edge is wonderfully wild. Every horizon is different and gratitude ensures we don’t go numb to the raindrop of time we have on earth. Perhaps the thesis of this riff is that one horizon is not the only endpoint. Each extent is just too cosmic to ever be the same. Trap time and enjoy sequencing distant views to hug the curves toward your own horizons.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Popcorning

There’s an energy that comes from jumping between different initiates in a diversified career portfolio.

An ability to popcorn between progress is what makes a diversified career portfolio work. Over time, the mental and physical exhilaration strengthens an elastic-type of energy that builds focus, even when it’s applied on multiple fronts and in tiny time windows.

This ambitious movement fuels action within different slices of a diversified career portfolio and should be celebrated. For example, the impactful days where we hammer on one thing, ship progress; pop to the next thing, ship different progress; and then pop one or three more times to fuel momentum on even more! This type of work is exhausting, but the flow makes us feel tenacious. With practice, this multi-modal focus is refined, increasing the leverage to explore exponential activities.

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I have a fun new phygital item for sale.
Video – https://youtu.be/6toglC21dwI

They’ll say you gotta focus. Only chase one rabbit. Maybe. If financial stability relies on a single income or paid employees depend on you to lead, less diversification will help support stability.

That said, who knows a leader who only does one thing? Leaders are everywhere, doing everything! We are efficient humans with super computers all around us. Even when different ventures don’t seemingly relate, there is a shared thread that sews efficiency into the work. YOU!

For anyone with more to build, there’s no permission required to add creative slivers to the pie chart of how you spend time. Does it take an extra gear? Yes. Might it require practice to stay balanced? Yes. Will you have to play 80 hours in order to avoid working 40? Yes. It is absolutely possible for anyone in our connected era? Yes!

Cheers to this elastic-type of energy that comes from popcorning between various initiates within a balanced diversified career portfolio.

By Ben McDougal, ago