The Clarity Paradox
When Your Greatest Strengths Block Your Path Forward
There's a paradox at the heart of achieving great things: The more capable you are, the harder it is to get clarity on what to do next. Your intelligence and ambition — the very things that should be your advantages — end up working against you.
Your analytical brain? Instead of helping you move forward, it points out all the ways things could go wrong. It takes you knee-deep into research and analysis looking for answers instead of trusting your own instincts.
Those high standards? They've got you endlessly iterating on that plan because somehow version 8.3.1 still isn't quite "there."
Your ambition? The stakes feel so high you freeze. Your internal decision-making software crashing under the weight of your dreams.
Each of your strengths working against you.
When you strive for the extraordinary the feelings of fear, doubt and uncertainty are there to stay — they are the price of admission. Clarity is not a feeling of calm or a feeling of certainty. And it is certainly not knowing the path to the outcome.
Sure, that’s what we want. But any idealized version of “clarity” where these feelings go away is a mirage. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can start making real progress.
So what is clarity really, and how do we actually find it?
Finding Clarity
My definition of clarity is being locked in on your long-term vision and knowing your next concrete action. That's it.
No perfect plans. No complete roadmaps. No certainty. Just a clear destination and a next step.
I can hear your analytical brain having a meltdown already. "But what's the plan? We haven't mapped out the dependencies. What about edge cases? And failure scenarios?" The urge to plan and to try and figure it out in our head is strong.
The thing about going after extraordinary goals is that they’re, well, difficult. The path to get there is uncertain. There are problems you can't even see yet, let alone solve. Skills you don't have. You don't even know if what you're attempting is possible. You can’t think your way through that uncertainty.
You can only get there one step at a time iterating back and forth between figuring out your next action and then taking that action. Every action you take reveals new information about the path forward. Information you could never get through thinking alone (shocking, I know - apparently the universe doesn't read our business plans).
So here's our challenge: we know action is what matters, but we still need to do some thinking to figure out which actions to take. How do we best do that?
The solution has two parts:
High-performance thinking habits - ways of thinking that harnesses your analytical capabilities rather than letting them run wild.
A systematic framework of four thinking roles that keeps you focused and moving forward with action rather than staying stuck planning.
Let's start with the high-performance thinking habits.
High-Performance Thinking Habits
There are two key thinking habits that are critical to develop. (And no, "manifest success through positive vibes" didn't make the cut.)
Key Habit #1: Actively Make Decisions
Everyone knows making decisions is important. But knowing and doing are two different beasts. I'm "decision-challenged" myself — I sit on decisions. I hesitate, trapped in an endless loop of “needing more information." The first app I built and put out into the world was a baseball stats tracking app. I had this thing sitting in a holding pattern for six months because I couldn’t decide whether to add the ability to sync through the cloud. I hummed and hawed back-and-forth. Finally, I just launched without it. Six months wasted…all because I couldn’t make a decision.
So, how do we become more decisive? I think the answer is to crank it up to 11. Don't wait for decisions to find you — hunt them down like your success depends on it (because it does). There’s a couple things that might block you.
First, you might worry about being wrong. I find this a particular problem for analytical types like engineers because there’s status with being the one who’s right. You’ve got to get over this…shift your mindset. Be okay with being wrong — and give yourself permission to change your mind.
Second, fear. You might be afraid of taking the action and the ensuing consequences from making that decision. Harsh truth: this is what you signed up for when you decided to go after that extraordinary goal. Summon some courage, make a decision and then get into taking action.
But wait, there’s more: there’s one particular type of decision that’s blocking you….
Key Habit #2: Be Specific
We have a tendency to want to keep things general…to leave things open. We decide that we’re going to build an app and so we sketch out a few screens. There’s tons of details to figure out and we’re not sure which way to go. So we stop to “think about it”. We tell ourselves we're being thoughtful, strategic even. In reality, we're avoiding the hard work of getting specific about the details. Keeping things vague feels good in the moment. It lets us dream without committing — there’s no risk of being wrong. But this vagueness is an action killer.
Eventually, we do push through and make some decisions. We get some momentum going. But then we hit another point where the path forward isn't clear – maybe it's deciding on the next feature or we start to think about the look and feel of the app – and we fall right back into that pattern of indecision. We set it aside to “do some research and look for inspiration.” This vagueness becomes our comfort zone - a place where we never have to commit to the hard decisions about details. We're really just postponing action. Those delays compound, turning days into weeks, and weeks into months, until one day we realize our bold idea has become just another unfinished project gathering dust while we’ve moved on to the next shiny idea (that we’ll totally finish this time).
Let’s remind ourself of what our ultimate goal is — relentless bold action. And so, staying in this comfort zone of vagueness is a huge problem.
The solution? Force yourself to be specific…crank it up to 11. (Yeah, we're doing a lot of cranking things up to 11 around here. At this rate, we might need to build an amp that goes to 12. Specially designed for Spinal Tap.)
Specificity is a decision about the details. Your brain's first response will probably be "let's check Twitter instead.” It may feel premature to figure out details when we’re worried about the high-level questions. But force yourself to put a stake in the ground on those details anyways…because that’s what unlocks action. You can always change course later if needed.
With those high performance thinking habits under our belt it’s time to talk about taking a systematic approach to our thinking.
The 4 Thinking Roles
When I was a kid my Dad had a Mazda RX-7...a fun little sports-car. But there was a problem…it only had two seats and we were a family of five. There were many times when I was stuck in the hatch-back my feet wedged beneath the front seats, my neck cranked down to fit under the roof. When I had my own three kids I went the other direction: we had a Honda Odyssey to cart them and all their stuff around town.
Just as different vehicles serve different purposes — some perfect for a mid-life crisis and others for carrying kids and their giant hockey bags around — there are different types of thinking we need to do. We have to choose the “right vehicle” suited to the purpose.
There are four different types of thinking, each with its own 'role' that shapes how we need to approach it:
The Leader: defines the long-term vision — the ‘what’ and the ‘why’.
The Strategist: figures out ‘how’ to make the vision happen — the plan.
The Coordinator: transforms the strategy into day-to-day actions.
The Maker: gets stuff done and handles the ground-level in-the-moment decisions.
Let's dig into each role.
The Leader
The Leader defines what extraordinary looks like for you. What it is and why this is the right choice for you. Everything flows from this vision.
You don't need to have it all figured out on day one. Your vision will emerge and evolve as you take action. But you do need to put a stake in the ground right now — something specific enough to guide decisions.
The Leader must get clear on four core things:
Your Central Thesis
Your Why
Long Term Outcomes
Who You Must Become
Your central thesis is your big bet about where things are going and how you'll win. It’s your elevator pitch — but for you, not for anyone else so express it in a way that speaks to you. This central thesis combines your view of the world with your unique way of creating value and impact.
Next comes your ‘why’. Why is this the right choice for you? What is the price that you’ll have to pay? This is where logic and emotion intersect. Your “why” should not be just a rational, logical argument. It has to come from a deeper emotional place driven by a higher purpose. I find it useful for this emotional component to contain both the positive and the negative. The positive part is that compelling vision that you’re moving towards. The negative part are those painful forces or a future of regret that we are moving away from.
Your long term outcomes are those big, specific outcomes that you’re going after…what does success look like?
And finally, the version of who you are today is probably not capable of the extraordinary outcome you’re going for. Who do you need to become? What skills, character traits, mindsets and beliefs must you develop?
The Leader Mindset
The Leader's job is to think big - to see what could be. There is a suspension, to a degree, of our limitations. This vision takes into account what our unique contribution can be. The vision should be something that is both feasible and something we’re willing to pay the price for. You want ambitious, not delusional.
This vision becomes your North Star — something you revisit every couple weeks to refine and extend. But a North Star only works if you use it to guide you.
The real test? At any moment you should be able to answer: "Is what I'm doing right now moving me directly toward my vision?" If you can't answer with a clear yes or no, your vision needs more work. The great news is that once you've got that vision locked in this question becomes a sobering reality check immediately snapping you back to the right path when you go astray. Just yesterday I caught myself going deep down a YouTube rabbit hole learning some new skills. But when I asked myself this reality check question I realized that this was a distraction. One quick check against my vision and boom - I was back working on what actually mattered.
The Strategist
While the Leader defines the 'what' and 'why', the Strategist figures out the 'how'. Here's where it's easy to get stuck - spinning our wheels building elaborate plans that get thrown out on day one. Here’s where we start worrying about all the ways that things can go wrong. (I’m still trying to find the pause button on my brain's "what could go wrong?" feature.)
The Strategist's job isn't to create a perfect or even great plan. No, it’s to get something that’s good enough. Don’t worry about making the wrong decisions — that’s not a big deal. Not making decisions? That's what kills projects.
My daughter is a competitive rock climber. She and her teammates talk about these things called 'crux moves'. As a climber works their way up a wall many moves are easy or straightforward. But then they get to a ‘crux move’. This is a move where things get really difficult. They make you go “oh...this is going to be interesting".
This rock climbing analogy has two valuable lessons that we’re going to apply (and no, one of them isn't "don't look down"):
Lesson 1: Your attention and effort has to be all-in on the crux move right in front of you. Worrying about crux moves further up the wall is hurting you — not helping.
Lesson 2: You can't solve a crux move from the ground. You need to get right up to it, feel the holds, see what you're actually dealing with. That impossible-looking move is often not so bad once you're actually there.
There will be many crux moves on your path to doing the extraordinary. Your job as the Strategist is to identify just the next crux move. That's it. Just that next difficult step ahead. Your brain wants to worry about all the difficult things further down the road (mine too). That's how you end up with those beautiful but useless 50-page strategic plans.
The second job of the Strategist is to figure out how to get up to the crux move as quickly as possible. You want to get a close look at it. If you spend too much mental energy worrying about the crux move before you get there you can easily get stuck on the easy, straightforward parts on the way there.
This is a problem I often have. I’ll be on step 1 when the crux move will be at step 10. But I have this broad feeling of doubt and fear in my gut…you know the kind. But the task right in front of me — step 1 — isn’t that hard. So, I’m confused why I’m feeling this way. Now I know why. My brain is worried about the crux move coming up but that crux move is far enough off that I can’t wrap my head around it. And so my brain sends out these broad signals of discomfort. Now I know what I need to do…get past those feelings and get the easy stuff done to get up to that crux move. Once I’m there then I’ll have a better sense of whether my feelings are justified.
So how do we get to that next crux move as quickly as possible? By identifying our constraints. Ask yourself: what is the one thing that is blocking us from getting to that crux point as soon as possible? That thing, whatever it is, is called the 'constraint'.
Once you’ve found the constraint put all of your energy and attention into solving it. No splitting your attention five different ways. All-in on solving the constraint.
Having said that, I find it difficult to always be working on the constraint -- constraints are constraints for a reason: they’re hard. Just as important is momentum…forward motion. And so I mix in some quick wins with that constraint-busting work.
This mix of constraint-focused work and quick wins needs to be translated into something concrete for the Coordinator. The Strategist's job is to break it down into focused projects with specific outcomes that can be achieved in 2-3 days. (Your brain will hate this level of specificity. Don’t give in…do the work.)
The Coordinator
The Coordinator bridges strategy and action. While the Strategist is writing up the battle plan, the Coordinator is loading the weapons and counting the ammunition. (Too dramatic? Maybe, but you get the idea.)
This is very tactical and action-oriented. The Coordinator figures out what to do each day — setting intentions, determining concrete next actions and ensuring that the resources (time, attention, equipment, etc.) are ready to take action.
The Coordinator also runs the 'machines’ — that is the systems, workflows and routines that create the consistent core work output and run our fundamental daily practices (including taking care of ourself).
The Coordinator has two main jobs:
Plan the day. Each day brings its own chaos - meetings, urgent emails, that one bug that just won't die (seriously, I swear it's reproducing when we're not looking). The Coordinator's job is to make sure the important stuff — our key actions to solve the constraint — don't get swallowed by the urgent stuff.
Create a list of concrete next actions for the Maker.
It’s important to double-click on this idea of making our next actions concrete. Your brain operates in two modes: idea mode and action mode. Idea mode is good for abstract thought, strategy and complex analysis. It’s the mode to be in for planning and strategizing. But it’s not the mode to be in when you want to get stuff done…that’s where the action mode comes in. Action mode blazes through tasks but…only if those tasks are specific and concrete. If the tasks are abstract or lacking definition our brain struggles. It wants to be told explicitly what to do. So, instead of "improve the user experience" (cue existential crisis) we make it concrete like "fix that button that looks like it was designed in 1999" (now we're talking).
The problem? Our brain in idea mode likes to keep things vague and abstract. It finds the low-level details boring. It just wants to move on to the next big idea. Since it’s the idea mode that does the planning we have to force it to make the next actions concrete. It will resist — it wants to save energy, take it easy, move on. Don’t let it. Make all of your next actions concrete.
The Maker
The Maker is where the rubber meets the road. No more planning, no more strategizing - just pure execution. This could be in focused 10-minute sprints or 4-hour deep work sessions where you emerge wondering why it's dark outside and if you remembered to eat lunch. Either way, the Maker works from a concrete action list from the Coordinator. Think of it as your "just do it" mode - no questioning, no second-guessing, just focused action. (Nike was right all along. Though I'm pretty sure they weren't thinking about debugging sessions at 2 AM when they came up with that slogan.)
Making the Roles Work Together
These four roles — Leader, Strategist, Coordinator, and Maker — are your complete operating system for turning big dreams into real results. Each role builds on the previous one: vision becomes strategy, strategy becomes projects, projects become next actions, and actions become results.
Give each role its own time and space. When you keep these roles separate, you prevent the kind of mental gridlock that happens when you try to be visionary and tactical at the same time. The Leader can dream without getting bogged down in details. The Strategist can plan without the pressure of immediate execution. The Coordinator can organize without getting pulled into long-term thinking. And the Maker can simply execute.
Remember: The goal isn't perfection in any role. The goal is forward momentum toward your vision. Making decisions. Getting specific. Taking action.
Conclusion
When you reach for the extraordinary, fear, doubt, and uncertainty come with the territory. There is no perfect plan that will make those feelings go away. (I know, I've tried. Multiple spreadsheets were harmed in the process.) Instead of trying to make the feelings go away focus on bold, direct action.
Start with a compelling vision from your ‘Leader’ thinking. Then focus on finding the next crux move and the quickest path to get there with small focused projects. Then execute. Day after day.
Hunt down decisions. Get specific — painfully specific. Reclaim your intelligence and ambition as strengths that propel you forward instead of holding you back.
When we're stuck, it's rarely because we're not capable enough. It's usually because we haven't done the hard work of getting clear - really clear - about what needs to happen next.
Remember that brutal irony we started with? How your greatest strengths can become your biggest barriers? Well, here's the plot twist: They're only barriers when you use them to hide from action. Start using them to drive action, and they become the exact tools you need.
Your extraordinary future is out there. Time to think clearly and act boldly.