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 4 new additions to the Zettelkasten (it was a busy week haha) - here’s the three that stood out most to share with you:

🟨 The hidden risk that slows every project down (and how to cut through it fast)

🟦 Why going deep on one tiny thing can unlock breakthroughs everywhere else

🟥 The secret to features people actually use (hint: the magic happens after its already shipped)

Starting a new project always comes with a fog. Learning new systems, politics, rhythm - trying to build a mental model that lets you actually contribute without throwing wrenches into moving machinery.

At first, I found myself hesitating. I didn’t want to propose too much before I understood the system I was stepping into. But the surprising realization was this: everyone was improvising. Everyone was moving quickly, making decisions with partial information, stitching things together while they learned.

The danger isn’t in contributing too early.
The danger is in acting without understanding.

Once I accepted that nobody had a perfect grasp of the system, my hesitation transformed into intention. I started to make careful, informed moves - small enough to be safe, specific enough to reveal how the system responded. Confidence came not from boldness, but from building a clearer map in my head.

Understanding always precedes mastery. And mapping the system isn’t a delay - it is the work.

 📎 Takeaway: Clarity reduces risk. The more precisely a system is understood, the safer and more effective everyones actions become.

—🗃️—

A few weeks into the new project, everything felt like it broke at once.

A streaming pipeline kept failing under flaky long-lived connections. WebSockets were dying. A client demo always felt imminent. I had been quietly studying this tiny slice of the system and in the grand scheme of the entire project it didn’t feel like much…until it fell apart.

That narrow, obsessive deep dive gave me just enough insight to see a path out. I stayed up building a new streaming approach that avoided the weak points entirely, deployed a local proof of concept, fought through bugs and deployment issues, and wired the whole thing end-to-end. By morning, it worked - and it was simpler, more robust, and set the team up for future clients, not just this one.

That’s when the “hacker mindset” clicked for me.

It’s not about moving fast and breaking things.
It’s about understanding things so well that you can move fast and make change without breaking anything.

Understanding gives you permission to improvise - not because you’re reckless, but because you know where the walls are.

 📎 Takeaway: Depth creates leverage. The deeper your understanding, the more elegantly you can solve problems.

—🗃️—

I’ve been building a new feature in Mulch, my network garden side project: a simple daily notification that asks, “Who did you talk to today?”

Log a few names, and your “garden” updates - the people you’ve been neglecting to talk to slowly brown, reminding you who needs watering.

What’s interesting is how this feature actually came to life.
My first version was the “Lego” approach - clean concept, tidy UI, all the right boxes checked. And then… I didn’t use it. It was technically complete but just not something I was using, it wasn’t part of my day. Too heavy. Too many steps. It didn’t meet me where I actually was.

So I rebuilt it through woodworking instead of Legos.
I focused on the things that bothered me, adjusted timing, tightened user flows, and kept sanding until it fit the way my use naturally flows. The breakthrough didn’t come from a better idea but from using the system long enough to feel the rough patches and giving enough attention to sand them down.

That’s the woodworking mindset: accepting the small, invisible refinements - the sanding, the gluing, the shaping - as the real path to something alive.

Lego gives you a product.
Woodworking gives you one you’ll actually reach for.

 📎 Takeaway: Quality comes from refinement. The first version is rough wood - the real product emerges from sanding.

—🗃️—

Closing Thoughts

Across all three ideas this week, the through line is surprisingly simple:

Progress doesn’t come from force - it comes from clarity.
Clarity about the system you’re operating in.
Clarity earned by going deep instead of wide.
Clarity revealed through the slow, deliberate actions of craft.

When you understand a system, you reduce the risk.
When you master a system, you earn the freedom to change it.

Refining your work turns the good into breakthroughs that shape your life.

The uncommon truth is this:
Breakthroughs come from attention, not intensity.
Look closely. Go deep. Keep sanding after “done.”

That’s how momentum builds into meaningful work.

Until next week
-GH

Thanks for reading Verstreuen! 👋 

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