Adam Keys is Thinking

In that order, every time.

I make a big deal about working downhill. Get stuff done, slice it smaller, get feedback, go again, remove friction, a little faster this time.

But let me tell you, none of that matters if it doesn’t come together and feel great once it’s all assembled in front of you.

When you feel it, you know. The feature makes you smile when you use it. It fits right in, like it was always meant to be there. You want to use it again. You want to tell people about it.

This is the difference.

— Mitchell Hashimoto, You Have to Feel It

Everyone loves a little faster, even if they say they want more function or nitpick on the form. But not everyone asks for it to feel great. That’s what distinguishes the good from the great and the great from the sublime.

Feel, fast, function, form. In that order. Every time.

It has to feel great, feel quick, have the right functions, and pleasing forms. In that order of importance.

I’ll excuse anyone if they’re not a transcendent genius who can create things exhibiting those qualities in that order and every time they sit down to build. But when you can get all four of those things together, even in small quantities, then you’ve got something special.

Feels great, feels fast, gets the job done, all the right affordances and embellishments. In that order, every time. You gotta try, at least.

The last 10% of any creative act is the hard part. (Previously: Finishing is a skill.) You had an idea, thought it would take X days, only to find X-1 days of all these other things that have to be done. That’s functional scope creep.

Finishing, actually getting the draft or project out of your computer and out into the world, that’s a whole other list of things. Lots of work, and surprises, are lurking here. Call it delivery scope creep. Or a finishing tax. And, it’s a mental challenge, getting over the “they’re all gonna laugh at you” fear. (But not in the Adam Sandler way.)

The more steps you can remove from putting something out there, the more you can put out there. (There’s always money in the shovel stand.) Ergo, the continuous development of new systems and tools to make online publishing easier, despite the market having excited for nearly three decades.

Related, the programmers’ credo: “we do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy.” So goes software, so goes any other creative endeavor.

Writing words and writing code feel similar, for me. (And, playing a musical instrument, if I go far back enough.) They are equal parts mechanical performance, exercise of taste, and act of creation. For all of them, I want to be in a flow state. I want to go as deep as I can, time permitting. I want to hold a whole world in my head. I want to work among as many details, as deeply as possible.

Finishing, whether it’s releasing software or publishing an essay, reviewing code, or editing and revising words, are a different skillset. Differently creative, but still putting something new into existence. There’s a nice symmetry there. If you can get good at editing and revising words, you can get good at editing and revising code.

Getting over the last 90% of any kind of project, whether code or words or music, is the same skill.

It’s like the last 90% of anything is just a mindset, almost a resilience of mind. If you can get good at one, the skill carries over into anything that requires finishing.

It feels like life pulls a fast one on us, at times. “What got us here, won’t get us there”. Making the software, essay, or music is different from shipping, publishing, or releasing it. But if you can get good at any one of shipping, publishing, or releasing, you are considerably further ahead on getting good at the other two.

The winning scenario for agent-assisted code, design, science, etc. is humans having more time to do creative and impactful thinking because computers/LLMs do the tedious setup, easily verified work, and gather preliminary materials that humans turn into inventions.

FWIW, I don’t think the worst scenarios are likely. The future isn’t atrophying literacy rates or people turning off their brains to tell LLMs what to do. It’s probably not Malthusian job scarcity or Keynesian leisure abundance, either.

The best outcome, IMO, is that producing almost-good-enough software, design, science, etc. is possible for more people, particularly those without specialist degrees.

You won’t have gym owners producing billion dollar SaaS companies, but they might produce software good enough to run their business without needing to contract out to a software developer.

You won’t have software developers producing the same level of design and art direction you see in major films. You might see them producing design good enough and sufficiently distinct that they can wait to bring a designer on until they’ve found their market.

You won’t have writers discovering new axioms of math and science, but you might see them correctly apply statistics and physics so that stories about finance and space battles are slightly more realistic.😉

In short: experts in topic A won’t find themselves held back by having an idea that requires expertise in topic A and topic B, where topic B is too deep for them to “just get good at”. Fewer Wozniaks will have to find their Steve Jobs, fewer Springsteens will have to find their Landaus.

It won’t exactly be you can just do stuff. But, perhaps you can get far enough along that collaborators to fill in the specialties you don’t can find you.