On intuitive decisions

I don't know why I do this. I helped over a dozen people get Wise accounts. I taught Notion to countless people. "Mavens" is what Malcolm Gladwell calls people like me.

How do we build a product that attracts more mavens?

A maven is a person that organically feels the drive to champion an idea or a product for no personal benefit.

It's in my interest for you to be a user of Instagram because Instagram is better when my friends are there. I'm incentivized to invite you. It's not true of Notion. So why do I keep promoting it? I don't know...

A builder of experiences like yours truly ought to know what it is precisely about these experiences that excite this need to continually promote them. But I don't. No clue.

It seems to be am indivisible property of the whole. Us product builders and strategists have this arrogant belief that these experiences will somehow burst into existence from tiny steps and rational discussions. I don't know about that, man...

There's nothing about Notion or Wise that isn't true of many other platforms. But for some reason, these specific ones hit different.

The things that are most likely to attract mavens and build long-term bonds with our users are not necessarily driving any obvious metrics. They might be working for us in the background, deep behind our epistemic limits.

There's no way you can tell if investing in prettier stuff or bluer stuff or even less stuff has less value than building more stuff or stuff that people asked for. It seems like we know, but that's because we're just afraid to face the clear arbitrary nature of our metrics.

I'm growing a fondness for a more intuitive approach. Perhaps our metric-led decisions need to serve a robust, reliable intuition instead of the other way around. Blasphemy, right?

The more I force myself to get comfortable with the psychological weight of my epistemic limits, my all-so-human fear of not knowing, the more I seem to see the fakeness and the arbitrary nature of our "Rational" decisions.

We can't experiment our way into everything. I reckon that often sometimes, it's best to act on principle. Maybe it's best to allow our intuitions to take the lead instead of some arbitrary short-sighted metrics that any fool can manipulate and abuse. Perhaps metrics are more like training wheels that help us develop into mature, sensible, and hopefully wise product leaders.

Napoleon didn't rely too much on metrics and analysis. He just knew and encouraged his generals to also "just know". The French call it a "Coup d'Oeuil" and it fascinated the Prussians who recognized the limits of their more formal approaches to decision-making.

Perhaps it's this sort of intuitive leadership that creates experiences that excite in folks this organic need to promote them. I don't know. But it sure as hell isn't more A/B tests.