Break Something to Fix It

Great things use up all of you. Late nights, early mornings, thinking, looping, drafts, versions. It’s a lot. And after such hard work, it can appear counterintuitive to throw all that in the bin in search of something even greater. So great it might not exist yet.

In my last article, I used a Rubik’s Cube as a metaphor for Iterative Thinking. In this article, the fascination continues, as I use it as a reminder that killing your best idea can get you to your best idea.

Getting the best ideas out of yourself sometimes means moving past the good ones to the great ones. Because what looks like a great idea is actually just one piece of the jigsaw in solving a much better one.

In the latter stages of solving a Rubik’s Cube, you’ll have completed one or two sides, each in a perfect colour. But in order to complete the whole thing, you’ll be faced with a choice to momentarily sacrifice an entire, say, blue side in order to complete another side that’s red. You’ll need to do this over and over, breaking sides you worked hard to complete until the entire cube locks into place and each side is completed.

Getting to great ideas can be a slog (though they shouldn’t be, that’s for another piece), so it’s natural we don’t want to let them go. We place them in our space, in our focus, determined to make them work. But we can falsely protect a much smaller win at the expense of a larger one. Admitting to ourselves that our time and creative investment went in a direction that no longer works can be hard. It makes us question our own skills and feels counter to “just pushing through” on a piece of work. Though I would posit that this is a skill: to recognise when, no matter the investment, an idea or project can only go so far.

The emotional investment we feel in an idea isn’t proportional to that idea being successful or serving our larger goal. If you’re focusing on that single coloured side of a Rubik’s Cube being messed up, then yes, you’ve made things worse. But if you zoom out and see the entire cube, you are actually making progress.

So disturb your best pieces of work. Let them go with little attachment. Clear house. Sometimes the path to something great lies in losing what already seems great.

Thank you for reading Operating Self.

I release articles once a day at the moment as I am doing the 100 articles in 100 days challenge.

My other current goal is to get one stranger from the internet (that is someone who does not know me IRL) to buy me a coffee. If you want that to be you (and you’d kind of be the first paying subscriber in a way, which is pretty cool) you can buy me a coffee here. More coffee means more caffeine means more ideas means more articles.

Thank you and I hope this piece, and what’s on this site, helps/inspires/creates something for you.