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

🟨 The assumption hiding inside “and”

🟦 Out of sight ≠ out of mind

🟥 Why progress rarely looks like the destination

Most advice focuses on improving the individual pieces.

Write better code.
Build a better model.
Create a better slide.

Each part gets optimized on its own.

But systems rarely fail because a single piece is broken.
They fail in the ands - the connections between parts.

I’ve been feeling this “integration hell” on my current project. We compartmentalized so much of the development that everyone’s pieces work well on their own. But now, just days before our big demo, we’re struggling to put it all together.

Every brick looks solid when you examine it individually.
But once you try assembling the structure, it becomes unstable.

And when the interface between pieces isn’t clear, something strange happens.
You end up with perfectly built components that simply don’t fit together.

That’s the hidden trap of complex work.

Two strong solutions don’t automatically create a coherent system.
Because one and one doesn’t equal two if you forget the “and.”

 📎 Takeaway: 
The value isn’t just in the pieces - it’s in how they fit together. Don’t just optimize the brick.

—🗃️—

Humans are very good at mentally closing doors.
We compartmentalize problems to reduce stress:

I’ll deal with that later.
That’s no longer my responsibility.
I’ve moved on.

Psychologically, it works. The issue feels contained.
Separated from the rest of our attention.
But the underlying system keeps running.

I’ve been noticing this on a team juggling too many priorities.
Something gets raised in a meeting.
“Let’s come back to that later.”
But later rarely arrives.

The issue gets pushed aside.
We shut the door like an overfilled cabinet, hoping nothing spills out.

Yet the system behind it keeps evolving.

Expectations still exist.
Dynamics continue evolving.

Even if we’ve mentally stepped outside the room.
The system and the tech debt continues compounding.

Ignoring a system does not pause it.

It simply means you are no longer steering it.

📎 Takeaway:
Closing the door may create psychological distance, but the system keeps running. Be intentional about the rooms you’re closing the door on.

—🗃️—

When people imagine progress, they tend to picture a clean sequence.

A clear plan.
A set of deliberate steps.
A predictable outcome.

But real progress rarely looks that clean.

More often it unfolds through a series of intermediate steps that seem unrelated to the final destination.

Breakthroughs rarely emerge from obvious beginnings.

Researchers studying innovation call these dissimilar proxies - explorations that appear unrelated but eventually unlock entirely new directions.

Video games helped drive major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.
Toy experiments led to serious robotics research.
Many successful companies began as small side projects that initially looked trivial.

The stepping stones didn’t resemble the destination.
But they open the path that eventually led there.

You see this pattern everywhere once you start looking for it.

Early writing looks like scattered notes.
Early projects resemble experiments.
Early networks look like loose conversations.

Only later - when enough pieces connect - does the path become clear.

📎 Takeaway:
Avoid judging the path too early. The stepping stones that matter most rarely resemble the destination they lead toward.

—🗃️—

Closing Thoughts

All three ideas from this week orbit the same principle:

The most important parts of systems are often invisible.

It’s not just the parts that matter - it’s the relationships between them. It’s not the act of closing the door - it’s the fact that the room continues to exist. And it’s not the individual stepping stone - it’s the trajectory those stones gradually create.

Clarity doesn’t just come from seeing what’s in front of you-it comes from recognizing what persists, connects, and compounds underneath.

Because progress isn’t built on isolated bricks. It’s built in the spaces between them.

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Until next week
-GH

Thanks for reading Verstreuen! 👋