[austin-cheney]

This is soooo challenging because it’s a two part problem.

1. You have to be in a position to see the great frustration, inefficiency, or obstruction. You will know it when you see it. It will be scary obvious when you do see it while everyone else just continues accepting broken practices as the accepted reality. It takes a special person in the right place at the right time to accomplish this, which is like a magical opportunity.

2. That first step is like a rare constellation alignment of the stars, and yet as rare as it is it’s the easy part. The challenging part is convincing people your solution is better.

[jackzhuo]

This describes my situation almost exactly, and it’s what triggered my reflection.

I built a “product” starting from keywords, but then realized I didn’t actually know where the users were, or how to talk to them. There was no obvious place for real feedback.

Starting from keywords let me ship something, but it also meant I was missing the professional context around the problem — the deeper understanding you only get by being inside the system where the frustration exists.

In hindsight, I think I optimized for building something, not for being close to the problem itself.