Verstreuen [ver-ˈstrɔɪ̯-ən]

verb (German)

1. to scatter; to spread widely.

2. (versehentlich) to spill, often by accident.

Verstreuen is my weekly ritual - revisiting notes to find the ideas worth carrying into next week.

_{Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more}

🗃️ This Week’s Highlights

This week's notes come from 15 new additions to the Zettelkasten - here’s the three that stood out most to share with you:

🟨 The Hidden Cost of High Standards

🟦 Why Doing Nothing Felt Like Failing

🟥 The Five Minutes Everyone Skips

I like to think I'm an efficient person - partly because I'm lazy, but also because I genuinely enjoy finding the cleanest path from problem to solution.

But after watching this video, I realized something uncomfortable: I wasn't optimizing for efficiency. I was optimizing for control.

I was trying to solve problems before they even existed. Handling edge cases nobody had encountered. Designing for scenarios that might not happen.

I was editing vacation videos - spending hours trying to cut clips perfectly on the beat, making sure every transition felt intentional.

But the perfection wasn't about making the video better. It was insurance.

Insurance against the possibility that the final product would feel sloppy, amateur, or not worth sharing.

Except that was never the goal - the goal was just to remember the trip, more personal than about making content.

To remember the tiny moments that made me stop, pull out my phone, and think "I want to keep this."

Perfection delayed the memory.
Efficiency would have let me experience it sooner.

Perfection protects the process. Efficiency protects the outcome.

📎 Takeaway: A lot of "high standards" are actually disguised attempts to avoid uncertainty. The question isn't "How do I make this perfect?" It's "What is the minimum quality required to make this valuable?"

—🗃️—

For the first time in a long time, I don't have all that much to do. But instead of enjoying it, I’ve started inventing things - added tasks, new projects, anything to stay occupied. Being done made me uncomfortable enough that I filled the space with busywork just to avoid sitting in it.

I'd been treating "done" as a problem to solve. But it's actually an advantageous position you want to be in. Being done isn't empty time - it's reserved capacity, sitting there so you can go all-in the moment something worth it comes up.

Naval describes this as living like a lion. A lion spends most of its time conserving energy - not because it is lazy, but because it is waiting for the moment that matters. And when the moment comes, it's total - a sprint with nothing held back.

Busyness isn't productivity. It's just what you do instead of trusting that being done is enough.

📎 Takeaway: Don't rush to fill every empty space. Capacity is an asset. Protect it. The best opportunities often require the energy you would have spent manufacturing unnecessary work.

—🗃️—

I was building a landing page for a product targeted at seniors, and I kept missing the mark. Every version felt too modern, too sleek, too much like it was designed for someone younger.

The frustrating part was I couldn't explain why it felt wrong.

So instead of tweaking endlessly, I looked at products that already solved the problem. I studied websites built for older audiences - like AARP and CVS - and immediately noticed patterns I hadn't even realized I was missing.

Larger text. Simpler navigation. More obvious calls to action. Stronger visual hierarchy.

The answer wasn't hidden in my creativity. It was already encoded in things that worked.

This is the power of finding your nearest neighbor. Existing solutions contain thousands of decisions you don't have to make yourself. They carry context, tradeoffs, and lessons that would take months to discover through trial and error.

The goal isn't to copy. It's to start closer to the finish line.

 📎 Takeaway: The instinct to invent your own answer is often less about originality and more about avoiding the five minutes it takes to see if someone has already solved the problem.

—🗃️—

Closing Thoughts

This week's ideas all point to the same lesson: not every problem deserves more effort. Sometimes the highest-leverage move is knowing what not to do - whether that's polishing something past its purpose, filling space that doesn't need filling, or rebuilding what already exists.

Good systems don't just help us do more. They help us spend our effort where it matters.

Until next week
-GH

Thanks for reading Verstreuen! 👋