Issue #029 — A spring letter on building something worth building

Dear reader,

A spring letter, on building something worth building. Twenty-nine issues in. The first arc closes here.

I have been thinking, this past month, about why we build at all. Most of the answers we are given are external. Money. Recognition. Status. Independence. Influence. They are not nothing. I have wanted all of them at various points and I am not going to pretend otherwise. They are also, I have come to believe, surprisingly weak fuels for the long parts of a building life. They burn hot for a year or two and then run out, and what is left is a company or a body of work or a practice that needs to be carried by something steadier.

The steadier thing, when I have looked closely at the people who have built well over decades, is some version of: this is the thing my time was for. Not a destiny. Not a calling, in the slightly mystical sense. Just a quiet, considered conviction that the work, on most days, is what they want their hours spent on, regardless of whether the world is currently noticing.

That conviction is rarer than the discourse suggests. Most builders are working on things that are fine — they pay, they pattern-match to status, they make some sense — without being the thing the time was for. The cost is invisible at first and severe over time. The body knows. The work plateaus in ways that strategy cannot fix.

The work worth building, in the small and usable sense I am proposing, is the work that meets two tests. One: you would still want to do most of it if nobody clapped. Two: the world, if it noticed, would be slightly better for the work existing. That is a deliberately low bar on the second test. Slightly better. Not transformational. Not revolutionary. The slight betterment, repeated by a million people doing the work their time was for, is most of what holds civilisation together.

If your current work passes both tests, you are doing the thing. Keep going. Be patient with the years that look quiet. Most of the years will look quiet.

If your current work passes only the second test — the world is helped, but you are dying inside — you are in service, and service is honourable, and you will burn out within five years, and the world will lose your help. Re-shape. Find the version of the help that you can give for thirty years instead of five.

If your current work passes only the first — you love it, but it is not in any meaningful way useful to anyone else — you are in a hobby, and hobbies are honourable, and you should be honest with yourself about the category and stop trying to make it pay. Some of the best things in my life have been hobbies, kept clean by being kept in their proper category.

If your current work passes neither, please consider, gently, whether it is the thing your time was for. The years are short and there are not as many of them as the planning makes it feel.

This is the twenty-ninth letter. Two years of writing into the room and seeing what came back. Some of what came back surprised me. Some of you have written replies I keep, in a folder, and re-read on the bad days. Some of you have never replied and I am grateful you are still here. The newsletter, by the small private definition I just used, passes both tests for me. I want to keep doing it. I am going to.

The next arc starts in May. Same shape. Slightly looser sentences, possibly. We will see.

Until then: build the thing your time was for, slowly, on purpose, in the company of a few people who do not need the work to be impressive in order to keep loving you.

With care, as always,
Enova