000016 — The last 10%

Let’s talk about clarity again. Which is funny, because the first Field Note I ever posted was also about clarity. I was on a flight to Boston, restless, writing in circles, trying to hurry my way to an answer that wasn’t ready yet. I remember thinking, I am either learning something here or I am just narrating my own impatience. Probably both.

And here I am, over a year later, coming back to the same theme. Not because I am stuck. Because clarity keeps turning out to be one of the greatest gifts I have been given. Attention. Awareness. The ability to notice what’s happening in my interior, and then actually name it. I have built a life where so much is complex and moving, and clarity is one of the few things that makes me feel like I am on solid ground.

I used to call that flow. I’ve read the books, watched the videos, seen the playlists and hacks and strategies, and I’m sure some of them work. What has worked better for me than any strategy is building an environment where flow is inevitable. I’m never not thinking. The difference now is that my thoughts used to control me, and now I can observe them. I can inspect them. I can ask where they came from and what’s motivating them. I can feel a thought show up and not immediately let it choose the next move.

A huge part of that environment is my journal practice. It’s one of the only real controllables I’ve had for a long time. For the past 13 years, I’ve been in it consistently, and that work compounds into clarity. When people say, “How are you always processing?” part of the answer is that I have a special brain. I have ADHD. My mind is loud, fast, associative, and it will happily connect ten dots at once. And the other part of the answer is that I’ve built a place to put the noise. I have a system that lets ideas come out messy, stay messy, and then slowly become something true. And that’s the shift I’m living inside right now. My work used to be getting thoughts out. Now my work is editing. Letting ideas mature. Sitting with things that are unformed and noticing, ooh, that’s not ready. Being able to discern not ready is a skill, and it took me an unreasonable amount of time to develop. It also feels like the exact skill we’re going to need as it gets easier to ship words before they’re ready.

Because I’m noticing a shortcut temptation everywhere right now, and I’m noticing it in me. I don’t mean that as a moral judgment. I mean it in the simplest way possible: we have tools that can produce coherence on command, and it’s easy to confuse coherence with maturity. It’s easy to ship the first “good” version and call it done, because it feels like motion.

Shortcuts pay off short term, and they don’t pay off long term. One of my kids had a shortcut lesson recently, the kind every parent knows will teach more than the lecture you want to give. The shortcut felt like relief right up until it created the exact consequence it was trying to avoid.

That story has been sitting with me because it’s the same shape I see in adults, just dressed up differently. The shortcut feels like relief right up until it creates the exact lesson you were trying to avoid. That’s the reaction I’m having to the acceleration of producing and outputting language without giving it time to mature. Progress is good. And some things still deserve time. Our communication and thoughts deserve time to mature. Words become choices. A rushed email can turn into a week of unnecessary cleanup. A half formed thought in a meeting can become the plan, just because it was the only thing said out loud. A text you fire off from a tired nervous system can create a tone you did not intend, and now you’re spending the next day walking it back.

I lived the cost of acting from an unmatured internal model. In adolescence. In young adulthood. In seasons where speed was the advantage. Speed was survival. That’s a hard thing to say, and it’s also true. I needed speed then. It kept me moving. It kept me safe enough. And at a certain point, speed stops being the advantage. It starts having diminishing returns. It becomes unsustainable. It becomes a reflex you keep using long after the original danger is gone.

I used to think speed was the advantage, and now I’m learning that the advantage is the last 10%. The part you can’t fake. The part that makes contact. The last 10% is the pause. It’s inserting executive action. It’s not moving from fear. Because when you’re moving from fear, you’re not thinking expansively. You’re using some of your skill set and you’re leaving a huge range of it on the table.

This is also why I love field notes. Every day, I notice things. I see things. I have small insights. Early in my life, my journaling was mostly lamenting. Grieving. Trying to make sense of what happened to me and what was happening to me. It was therapy. It was self parenting. Now, because the system has matured, the thoughts coming out of it are different. There are ideas that show up now that I couldn’t have produced ten years ago, because the thought wasn’t mature yet.

And this is where models get interesting for me. I don’t want them making decisions for me, and I don’t want them finishing my thinking for me. I want them helping me think, and showing me the counterargument in real time. I’m good at thesis. A model can hand me antithesis. Then I synthesize. Sometimes it’s as simple as it asking, Are you posting this from performance? Are you trying to prove something? If yes, shelf it. That kind of feedback loop is powerful, because it helps me see me in the content.

Photography is my cleanest analogy for the last 10%. I shoot on prime lenses, not zoom lenses, because it forces my body to be present. I have to move. I have to choose the perspective. The last 10% in photography is a breath, a step back, a pause, examining the frame. That’s the difference between an okay photo and a great photo. Writing is similar. The first pass is the capture. The last 10% is where you find the unmodified voice.

So the rule I’m living by right now is written on my whiteboard: steady, steady, steady. I’m retraining my nervous system. I’m an incredible sprinter, and I haven’t needed to survive like that for a long time, so I don’t need sprinting as my default tool. I need endurance. I need durability.

And when I’m about to ship something that feels like it came from a sprint, from hurry, the sentence I want to remember is simple. Why are you doing this? Question the process. Question the method. Question the idea. Not to accuse. To make the work better.

Shout out to first grade DK, because apparently, he knew something I’m still learning to fully appreciate. Let the draft be the draft. Don’t edit while you’re writing. Iteration is the point.

I like how these field notes come in clusters. They show up, they go quiet, and then they show up again. That ADHD brain network is real, and in this season I’m learning to appreciate it, not as speed, but as depth, as the last 10%. And I’m genuinely curious what comes next. I don’t want to force output just to stay loud. I want to share what’s actually flowing, what’s actually real, when it’s ready.

I want to share what is actually flowing, what is actually real, when it is ready.

Steady, steady, steady.