In life, we're builders. We build careers, companies, portfolios, products and plenty of other things.
Heck, some of us even build buildings.
So that got me thinking - can we extract principles that drive success in building things across domains? After many long and thoughtful walks, I've boiled it down to 4 steps. I invite you to take these steps and apply them to what you've successfully built in your life. Then, see whether these steps were missing when you failed to build something you wanted to.
Let's dig in.
Start with WHY.
WHY do you want to build the thing you are thinking about? WHY are you drawn to solving that particular problem? WHY does it matter to you? A strong WHY is the foundation for being able to embrace the challenges that come with building worthwhile things. A strong WHY is the bedrock of everything that comes next.
Don’t be afraid to answer these WHY questions with emotion and personal motivation. Becoming emotive about your WHY is a good thing, because well-tuned emotions evolved to help us guide our decisions, and people who lack emotion can't make good decisions.
Basically, follow that gut feeling.
Define your WHAT.
Once you have a strong, moving WHY, the next question is: "WHAT am I going to build to fulfil my WHY?". This is a descriptive process (e.g. "What do I want my life to look like?"). You'll gain so much benefit from clearly defining a WHAT, before you set out to fulfil your WHY. Without a well articulated WHAT, your actions are aimless. You'll have a WHY, which is pulling you somewhere, but you don't exactly know WHAT you want, and that can feel uneasy.
I invite you to write a single page document of WHAT exactly you want to achieve within a given WHY. I think you'll find it to be relieving and offer immense clarity. It removes the uncertainty and discomfort of having your motivating force expended aimlessly.
Strategise your HOW.
Any time you have ask HOW following a WHAT, you are tapping into your inner strategist. The fundamental strategy question is "HOW do I get WHAT I want?". This step is important, but my experience tells me that we tend to give this HOW too much focus.
People love strategising and planning. It makes them feel good and productive. Personally, I notice that I can abuse planning as a form of "productive procrastination". But if you're planning for the wrong WHAT and WHY, then all your well laid plans will go to waste anyways.
This isn't to say the strategy isn’t important. I’m just observing that even though we like to make well-intentioned plans, life will throw curveballs. So even if the plan fails, the WHY (and WHAT) should be solid enough to get you back on track as you find another plan.
Define your WIN.
We often forget to define our endpoints, or at least we don't do it too well. For personal goals and ambition, knowing how you'll define success is vital. It means that you can embrace the accomplishment of arriving at your destination. When you're building more objective things, it's important that the WIN is quantifiable - are you aiming for a certain number of sales? Or a certain number of subscribers?
Defining your win means you can know when you've reached your WHAT. In fact, these 2 steps are very closely related. Sometimes they might even be the same thing.
Only by knowing where you've reached, can you go back, re-assess your WHY, and re-orient your next cycle of building.
Think of this step as checking that you've reached the right location on a map before continuing your journey.
Haven’t you missed out the part of actually building the thing?
I think that if you follow these principles, the actual act of building will sort itself out. Because ultimately, that’s a question of getting out of your own way, slowly and smoothly putting one foot in front of the other, and reaching your defined win.
As Nietzsche said:
"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how".
So I leave you with this parting thought:
If a particular action feels like a painful sacrifice, your WHY may not be strong enough.
Rediscover your true WHY, and the correct action will present itself effortlessly.
Recommended reading from Substack:
✍️
serendipitously embodied my proposed building process (why → what → how), as it relates to writing.💯
delves down into the Sub-Mille and shows that Substackers with less than 1000 subscribers are worth reading.📖
and collaborate on a piece exploring the role of AI in writing fiction👨💼
writes about how AI can made management consultants 12% more efficient at “doing tasks” - which sounds like something management consultants would be quite pleased about.☑️
dissects ’s thesis on the technologically driven “Grey Tribe” as an alternative power to the standard Red/Blue divide.
Recommended reading beyond Substack:
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I learn from my readers, so leave a comment with your thoughts.
Well captured and concise.
Very well laid out and succinct piece Zan.
I agree with all your points and the order in which you put them. And what I liked the best was ‘defining our win’ - as I think it’s easy to forget this part and just create some open-ended goal that seems to always elude being achieved because we never defined what achieving it would look like.
Thanks Zan