You can see the end and still build the wrong thing. That’s the trap.
I wrote about Skateboard to Space Station a few weeks ago. Gall’s Law: complex systems that work evolved from simple systems that worked. Start with the skateboard. Iterate up.
There’s a corollary I left out.
You need to know what the space station looks like.
The shape of it. The gist.
Without it, you optimize the skateboard. Smooth wheels. New grip tape. LEDs on the bottom. You polish the thing you have instead of evolving it into what it needs to become.
My first Multi customer pulled me toward Descript’s game. More human editing. More manual control. More polish on each video. That feedback made sense for where the product is today. But I know the space station is agent-first. Agents produce the work. Following that pull means fighting a Goliath on their terms. Counter-positioning is asymmetric warfare. Use it.
The space station told me which feedback to ignore.
The space station is a compass.
You won’t build the one you drew. The real version will look different. That’s fine. The sketch gives direction. It shapes what you work on and what you stop optimizing.
Hold two things. The next step and the end state.
The middle is unknowable. Like planning move 30 in chess, except life has more variables than any board. Your plan blows up by step three. You replan. Blows up again.
I see my old self in this. Planning step 15 before finishing step 2. That planning felt productive. It felt like work. It was procrastination wearing a strategy hat.
Build the next step. Know the end game. The middle is unknowable.
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What’s the space station version of what you’re building right now?
