Welcome to Verstreuen, meaning “to scatter.” Each week I share highlights from my Workframe system, the process I use to turn books and notes into structured insights. Here, scattered ideas find connection and become something worth sharing.

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🗃️ This Week’s Highlights

This week's notes come from 58 new additions to the Zettelkasten - here’s the three that stood out most to share with you:

🟨 Why Cutting Too Much Might Be the Smartest Move You Ever Make

🟦 The Summit Won’t Save You

🟥 Forget the Masterplan

Lately, I’ve been on a ruthless editing streak - burning old drafts down to the bone. Sometimes cutting too much. But that’s the point. The real insight isn’t in what disappears it’s in what insists on coming back.

I’ve started calling this The Phoenix Pass: the discipline of cutting past comfort until clarity rises in what demands to return. Editing becomes more than subtraction - it becomes value discovery.

✍️ Writing
I’ll delete whole paragraphs that feel unnecessary, only to realize one line begs to return. That’s the line that carries the piece.

🗂️ Work
In team reviews, my slides often get reduced by two-thirds. What returns isn’t everything cut - it’s the two or three points that actually matter. The Phoenix Pass distills noise into signal.

🚀 Design
SpaceX engineers do this at the highest level. Their mantra reframes deletion not as a risk, but as the path to truth. If nothing ever needs to be added back, you probably haven’t cut deep enough to expose what’s truly essential.

Across domains, the pattern holds: iteration and revision reveal true value.

📎 Takeaway: Editing isn’t just subtraction. The Phoenix Pass proves that what’s essential will rise again.

—🗃️—

I used to think reaching the summit would fix everything. Finish the big project, land the job, hit the milestone - and life would finally feel different. But the more I climb, the more I realize the view from the top won’t do the transforming for me.

This line put it perfectly: the mountain doesn’t give you zen. You carry it with you.

The change happens on the way up - in the rituals that feel too small to matter.

Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, wrote that routine tasks can become rituals. Not because they’re novel each time, but because they reacquaint you with the familiar.

For me right now, it’s a daily Duolingo lesson. One more sentence, one more aggressive green owl. It doesn’t feel profound - but it keeps me moving toward something bigger.

And every so often, I catch a glimpse of the summit: a French phrase I overhear on the subway, a Chinese character I recognize on the menu. Small rewards, but proof the climb is working.

The same applies to work. An hour carved out for a project. A nightly review I stick to even when it’s already 2am. These little rituals rarely feel transformative in the moment. But I trust they’re shaping me, step by step, as I climb.

📎 Takeaway: The peak is a reward. The climb is the transformation. Bring your zen with you.

—🗃️—

I used to think the only way to make progress was to build the grand plan: a website polished for every visitor, a product ready for scale on day one. I wanted to get it perfect before anyone saw it.

But clarity is only useful if it matches reality.

Or as Mike Tyson put it: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

I learned this firsthand. At work, I was leading a solution architecture we sat on for weeks, trying to perfect every detail. We designed for every edge case we’d heard in discovery, convinced we were building the “balanced” masterplan.

But the moment we showed it to the client, they ripped it apart. Every carefully considered feature was interrogated, cut, or bent until the final version resembled the original only in name.

What we thought was an execution problem turned out to be a discovery problem. The truth was we didn’t need more planning - we needed faster feedback. Our grand plan evaporated the instant it met reality.

That’s when I realized discovery problems don’t yield to masterplans. The only way forward is to start small, ship something imperfect, and let feedback do the editing.

That’s why I’ve stopped trying to create sprawling projects. Value discovery demands smaller bets: a single landing page experiment, a tiny version of the bigger idea. Like striking flint, the first spark isn’t meant to light the fire - it’s meant to show you you’re doing the right thing.

📎 Takeaway: Don’t plan the masterpiece. Start with a spark. Small projects reveal the path big ones can’t.

—🗃️—

Closing Thoughts

If there's one theme this week, it's this: clarity comes from action.

Not from overthinking.
Not from waiting for the perfect moment.
Not from perfecting the plan.

✂️ Action is cutting too much - only then do you see what matters.
🧗 Action is taking the next step - only then do you see who you're becoming.
⚡ Action is releasing something raw - only then do you see how the world responds.

We trick ourselves into thinking we need certainty before we act.
But certainty comes after we move.
Waiting creates noise.
Action reveals the signal.

The Phoenix Pass. The daily ritual. The small bet.
Different names for the same truth: the world reveals itself to those already in motion.

Default to action.
Because the world belongs to those who move it.

Thanks for reading Verstreuen! 👋 

Until next week
-GH

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