Back in the Game: From Content Burnout to Clarity

Alright, I'm back!

I'm not going to bore you with the content exhaustion story (maybe some other time), but in short, when you start a new project, everything is new and exciting. You feel like you have more ideas than you can keep track of.

But the real work begins after that excitement and momentum wears off. In my case, that's kind of what happened. I thought I'd have ideas to share every day, and I did at first. But I started to feel forced to come up with interesting things to say and was "losing my soul" to ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, and Perplexity in an effort to stay relevant.

But I'm back now and a weekly newsletter seems like a better frequency to provide authentic, human-generated value.

So for today, let's talk about optimization, but not in the way you think.

Oftentimes, optimization, in business, relates to increasing productivity and getting more for less. But I want to look at it from the lens of luck and outcomes.

Optimizing for luck vs outcomes

I received this screenshot after joining an entrepreneur community

It says: “Hi Evan I hope you're doing well and had a great weekend. I noticed you are seeking a resource for full-stack and Al engineers. Are you open to considering my offshore teams in a full-time position? Our team is fully dedicated to providing remote support for you, working under our supervision for 40 hours each week in the US Eastern Time Zone. Can we discuss this over a call? Please let me know when you are available to talk.”

The person clearly didn't read my introduction, didn’t have any idea of what I am doing, or demonstrate that they cared about me in the slightest…

Obviously, I jumped up and down with joy, feeling eternally grateful for this opportunity to give this person my time and money.

In case you weren’t sure, that was sarcasm.

But it genuinely had me wondering why they would waste their time sending me a message that would likely result in no answer.

Were they optimizing for luck or their desired outcome?

It was most likely some automation that barely took any time but still…why?

Optimizing for luck = you’re playing the numbers game (or no game at all) and if you get the desired results, it’s because you’re an exception. If the objective is to book a discovery call with a potential client, optimizing for luck is spraying cold emails to anyone who enters their radar and has a pulse. There is no evaluation to see if the recipient is in need of the service...it's all about the sender.

There's no thought given to what would maximize their chances of success. If they hit enough times, they’re bound to get lucky at some point...that's their motto.

Optimizing for your desired outcome = you align everything in your control to maximize your chances of getting the outcome you want. On the other hand, optimizing for outcomes is doing the research to send a curated message related to a pain point the recipient is experiencing...it's all about the recipient.

You're only doing the things that will maximize your chances of success. You have fewer opportunities to hit, but each opportunity has a greater chance of achieving a home run.

This was just an example, but if you extrapolate that across an entire business and you let the wrong sides of the business to chance, you're exposing yourself to pretty big risks.

Leaders have to define the outcomes they want and then optimize for how they want to achieve them.

How do you optimize for a desired outcome?

What can you do to maximize your chances of success without spiralling down and attempt to control the outcome?

The formula is simple:

PAWWW = People + Actions + (3)Why

• People: Who are the people directly and indirectly involved

• Actions: What are the actions these people are taking

• Why:

  • Why are these the people involved

  • Why are these the actions we're taking

  • Why is this important

Again, the purpose isn't to try to control an outcome. The purpose is to position everything in your control in a way that maximizes your ability to "bend reality to your will".

What about serendipitous events?

When you don't have control over anything (even the things you can control) everything that happens is up to chance...There's no room for serendipity. While that might be good life advice, it doesn’t translate very well to business.

When you take control of the things in your control (and let go of the rest), you're giving more room for serendipity. Your team can lean into serendipidous moments without worrying about everything else because everything else has already been established (to a reasonable extent).

Building something that lasts requires the thoughtful acknowledgement of intentional direction.

All that means is that you need to be purposeful in what you build and how you build it because things won't just happen because you want them to happen. You can't control who opens your sales emails or how people react. 

But you can control your approach, your processes and the goal you want to achieve.  

Keep building, keep going 🚀

Startups, corporates, it doesn’t matter. I've seen great ideas crash from not thinking a few moves ahead. That’s why I built the Straightforward Strategy Blueprint, a FREE template so your idea doesn’t become another could-have-been. Get it here.