We are only at the starting line of scaling—what David Deutsch calls the Beginning of Infinity. On a scale from 0 to 1, many of our processes are still at zero. Everything feels like hard graft: manual, labor-intensive, and frustrating at the ground level. While this may be infuriating for many, it should also excite the techno-optimists among us—and maybe even provide some relief for the 9.5% of developers who prefer to do as little as possible.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s easier than ever to build something nowadays. However, without deliberate thought, what we build risks becoming just another addition to the growing pile of poorly implemented solutions (how many bad chatbots have disappeared back into the dark corners of R&D?).
Our goal is not to churn out mediocre tools—it’s to make greatness possible and, ideally, the default. Kenneth Stanley’s book, Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, offers an interesting perspective here: sometimes the pressure of objectives (like time-constrained goals) stifles creativity and innovation. Yes, necessity may be the mother of invention, but only when there’s enough time and space to invent—pure grind rarely leads to breakthroughs. To foster meaningful progress, we first need to clear the obstacles that eat away our time and energy, preventing us from exploring new ideas.
At the heart of this challenge is the need for time and mental bandwidth—both of which align naturally with streamlining processes. So the question is not, “What flashy new thing can you build?” but rather, “What mundane, repetitive process can you automate?” By eliminating drudgery, we make room to think, explore, and innovate.