This year I saw stark difference between Idea People vs Doer People. The Idea people were generally used to being managers. They would talk and talk about what SHOULD be done, but when asked the plan for DOING it w/resource constraints, would hem and haw and throw up hands and say it was impossible.
Then there were the Doer people. Someone hands you some duct tape and says “Go build a castle” and you look up how to build castles with duct tape, and you… Just build the fucking castle. It’s not perfect – it’s made of duct tape! – but the ask is fulfilled and you move on to next ask.
I always took this scrappiness in myself for granted at various jobs, but working at a startup, in particular, it became very clear very quickly who the Doers were and who the order takers and legacy brand managers were. When the boss has an idea, you make it happen. That’s the job.
And don’t get me wrong: there’s also managing expectations like “hey I can build you a castle with duct tape, but here’s what that will actually look like. No one is getting a Ferrari on a Subaru budget. But this experience has bled out into my personal life this year as well.
I realized there were a lot of things we had TALKED about doing that we had not done. There was good reason for that, last 5-7 years: being poor, elder care, health catastrophes. But after digging myself out of my hole, I’ve been looking at how many years we have left and how many projects we have.
The truth is that for many of us, it’s not end destination that’s the point, it’s the dreaming about it. But I’m someone who likes to make dreams tangible. It’s why I write books. It’s the coolest thing in the world to take something from your head and make it real in other people’s heads. Magic!
My manic “do-ing” feels over the top right now as I schedule a bunch of project estimates and clean a bunch of brass door fixtures, but it’s informed by experience: having a solid footing where no one is unemployed or in the hospital is rare around here. This is the time to seize all doing.
