Verstreuen [ver-ˈstrɔɪ̯-ən]

verb (German)

1. to scatter; to spread widely.

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

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

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🗃️ This Week’s Highlights

This week's notes come from 26 new additions to the Zettelkasten - here’s the three that stood out most to share with you:

🟨 Why focusing on outcomes might be killing your momentum

🟦 The difference between making something and meaning something

🟥 The productivity trap that keeps smart people stuck

I've noticed that whenever I get too fixated on an outcome, I tend to slow down.

Not because the goal is wrong. Usually it's a good goal. But the more I stare at it, the heavier it gets, the further it seems.

We're told to organize our lives around outputs. Finish the project. Grow the thing. Get in shape. Hit the number. Set audacious goals when inspired. And that's fine - those goals give direction. But they're not very good at telling you what to do on a Tuesday morning when you're tired and the reality of that audacious goal sets in.

That's where input goals come in.

An output goal tells you where you want to go. An input goal tells you how you move.

"Write a newsletter" is an outcome. "Write 200 words a day" is an input. "Get fit" is an outcome. "Train four times a week no matter what" is an input.

The difference seems small, but it changes everything. Output goals collapse progress into a future moment. Input goals turn progress into rhythm, a habit even. One makes you evaluate. The other makes you move.

There's another side to this too - focus. It's much easier to just write 200 words today than to hold the weight of the whole newsletter or book. Trying to optimize toward the larger goal actually pulls your attention away from the work in front of you.

Joe Hyams sums it up quite well in Zen in the Martial Arts:

"When one eye is fixed upon your destination, there is only one eye left with which to find the Way."

The people who seem consistent usually aren't more motivated. They've just got both eyes on the path ahead instead of getting distracted trying to solve for things beyond the immediate path.

This newsletter is a small example of that for me. I used to try and think about how each piece would fit into a broader content strategy - how ideas could connect, compound, work together across platforms. It felt exciting but also daunting. It slowed me down and, honestly, made the writing worse at times. Now I sit down once a week and just write. That's the input. Whatever comes from it, comes from it.

The less I obsess over what each piece does, as an output. instead focusing both eyes on the input, putting words and ideas on a page, the easier it has become to sustain.

 📎 Takeaway: Big goals can inspire you. But only inputs can carry you

—🗃️—

I was watching a video about a startup founder speaking to his team about pivoting the whole company. "If we don't do it," he said, "someone will get there first."

It stopped me for a second.

Because he's probably right - someone will. Most of us are working on the same set of problems, with access to the same tools, the same information, roughly the same hours in a day. The functional output of our work is often closer than we'd like to admit.

What isn't the same is what we put into our work.

The laborer executes. The craftsman refines. The artist cares.

That distinction doesn't live in the what. It lives in the how.
Two people can ship the same product, write the same document, build in the same space and leave completely different marks on it.

One is forgettable. One carries something of the person who made it.

That's what determines how your work lives on. Not necessarily whether you got there first. Not whether you were the most efficient. But whether someone can feel, in the thing you made, that a person actually made it.

 📎 Takeaway: Your work is your introduction. Make it feel like a person made it.

—🗃️—

I've spent a lot of time trying to become more efficient at things I hadn't actually started. It feels productive while you're doing it.

Organizing the system. Refining the plan. Finding the right tool. Cleaning up the workflow before the real work begins.

But most of the time, that isn't preparation. It's hesitation with better branding.

Efficiency matters later - once you've done enough of the work to know what actually deserves to be optimized.

Early on it's just a way of adding friction between decision and action. and a small coefficient of “friction” is one of the strongest predictors of whether someone is successful. The smaller that gap, the more of your energy converts into motion instead of leaking out as doubt, over-thinking, and delay.

Close this gap and you stop refining in theory and start learning in practice. Real information comes back. The work stops being imagined and starts becoming real.

Messy execution teaches faster than elegant procrastination. More attempts per unit of time means more feedback, more learning, faster compounding. You don't think your way into clarity. You move, and clarity finds you in the facts you uncover along the way.

 📎 Takeaway: The gap between deciding and doing determines almost everything. Close it faster.

—🗃️—

Closing Thoughts

Looking back at these three ideas, I didn't plan for them to fit together. They came from different notes, different sources. But sitting with them now, I can see why they all come together into something unexpected.

Direction. Depth. Velocity.

Not as a framework - just as three things I'm actively trying to get better at. Staying focused on the input and not getting lost in the destination. Bringing enough of myself to the work that it actually feels like mine. And closing the gap between deciding and doing faster than feels comfortable.

Show up before you're ready. Care enough to leave a mark. Trust that clarity will find you on the journey.

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Until next week
-GH

Thanks for reading Verstreuen! 👋