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 32 new additions to the Zettelkasten - here’s the three that stood out most to share with you:

🟨 99% of effort is wasted

🟦 You’re only competing because you’re copying

🟥 Quit right before the work would have started working

For a long time, I thought the goal was to make every effort count.

Pick the right projects.
Use time efficiently.
Avoid wasted motion.

But that’s not really how progress works.

Most effort does not pay off directly.

Not everything is going to succeed, and a lot of that 99% is time spent learning.

A bad draft teaches you what strong writing actually requires.
A weak idea sharpens your taste.
A failed attempt gives you feedback you could not have gotten any other way.

The problem is that people expect effort to pay off in the same quantity they put in, and it usually doesn’t.

More often than not, it pays off later — as growth in judgment, skill, pattern recognition, and sharper instincts that help you reach the next level.

But there is an important catch:

Effort only compounds when it is directionally aligned.

If your work is near the thing you want, even the misses help.
If you are doing random things a mile wide and an inch deep with little connection to where you are trying to go, you are not building capacity. You are just burning energy.

That is why goals matter so much.

Not because they make progress neat and linear.
Because they act as a filter.

They help you separate what is merely interesting from what is actually useful.

That is also why I built the DoneOS Notion template.

Because the real cost is not wasted effort.
It is misaligned effort.

DoneOS is a goal-aligned task system built so that the work on your list is connected to what actually matters. Through structured planning and regular reflection, it helps you spend less time drifting between options and more time working on the things that compound.

Start working on what matters.
Get DoneOS →

📎 Takeaway:
Not everything you do will move you forward.
But if it is aimed at the right target, even failure can compound into something that does.

—🗃️—

When I first started writing this newsletter, I wasn’t sure how I wanted to write it.

The first few editions were me figuring out how to share the ideas I had found.

I tried different formats, different structures, different ways of making the ideas feel clear and lived-in.

And like most people, I went looking for what was already working.

How other people wrote.
How they packaged ideas.
How they made their work feel polished.

The Tim Ferriss "5-Bullet Friday" email newsletter was a particular inspiration which helped — but only up to a point. Because the more I borrowed, the flatter the work felt.
Not worse. Just less mine.

That made me realize something:
What makes creative work valuable is not just the idea.
It is the person filtering the idea.

Two people can read the same book, hear the same quote, or notice the same trend — and make completely different conclusions from it.
Because they are not drawing from the same life.

Your experiences become a filter.
And that filter is what makes your work distinct.

📎 Takeaway:
Your perspective is not extra.
It is the most defensible part of your work.

—🗃️—

There is a point in almost every project where the excitement wears off.

The early novelty is gone. Progress is hard to measure. Something new starts looking cleaner, fresher, more promising.

That is the moment most people leave.

Not because they are weak but because switching feels easier - even smart.

A new idea gives you energy. It creates the feeling of instant momentum. It lets you avoid the part where the work becomes repetitive, quiet, and uncertain.

But that is usually the exact point where compounding was just about to begin.

The middle of any worthwhile pursuit is boring in a very specific way: you are no longer a beginner, but you are not yet seeing obvious returns. So it becomes easy to misread the situation. You think the path is broken, when really the roots are just still underground.

Most people do not quit because they chose the wrong thing. They quit because they have not stayed long enough to experience what sticking with one thing does.

Not just progress.
Leverage.

📎 Takeaway:
Most people do not fail because they picked the wrong path.
They fail because they keep restarting before the path has time to compound.

—🗃️—

Closing Thoughts

All three ideas point to the same thing:

Effort only becomes valuable when it is aimed correctly and held long enough.

If your work is misaligned, energy is lost.
If it is borrowed, it is less defensible than it could be.
If you leave too early, your progress resets.

That is why most people stay stuck.

Not because they are not working.
Because their effort never gets the chance to compound.

Compounding needs three things: direction, distinctness, and time.

Most people do not fail because they waste effort.
They fail because they scatter it, dilute it, or restart it before it compounds.

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Until next week
-GH

Thanks for reading Verstreuen! 👋