Ideas Over Implementation

Here's the trap most teams fall into: they get emotionally attached to their first solution. The architecture they chose, the framework they picked, the approach they committed to in that early planning meeting. But early decisions are made with the least information you'll ever have. Treating those choices as sacred doesn't make you principled - it just makes learning more expensive.

The real insight here is about where you anchor your identity as a builder. If you anchor to the implementation, you're forced to get everything right up front. That's an impossible bar. But if you anchor to the objective - the actual problem you're solving, the outcome you're driving toward - you give yourself room to course-correct when reality pushes back. And reality always pushes back.

Strong teams hold ideas lightly and goals firmly. That's not indecision or lack of conviction. It's respect for the fact that your understanding improves with motion. You learn by shipping, by watching users interact with your work, by seeing which assumptions hold up and which ones crumble. Sunk cost is inevitable - you will invest time and effort into approaches that don't pan out. But rigidity is optional. The question is whether you're willing to revise the how without losing sight of the why.