Can't Not

I just read pg’s latest essay “What to do”.

It’s great, as always.

He gives the generally good base advice of:

“One should help people, and take care of the world.”

He then goes on to suggest:

“Make good new things.”

Clumsy phrasing, but great advice.

The rest of the essay mops up.

I can’t argue.

But I was thinking about this myself, personally.

For me, I follow the maxim:

“Do whatever you can’t not do.”

Double negative, but this is it.

If I work against it, I’m almost always miserable.

This does not mean I don’t do support. I almost always want to do support. I know things, people need help, I help them. I want to serve.

But it means that I work on projects that deep down in my guts I have to work on.

I work on projects that I can’t not work on.

Put again:

I make things I can’t not make.

The must exist in the world. I must make them exist.

I have to purge it the notion. Get it out. Feel release before continuing on.

It probably doesn’t universalise, and it’s not quite the same as pg’s advice, but does not contradict it either.

It does allow me to do things that are not “new”, but the step-wise build process might be “new” for me.

Double negatives always seem to be looked down upon.

I recall another from the theory of innovation. From the book “The Heart of Innovation” I believe.

I think it was “Inherent Necessity” phrased as something the target customer/user “can’t not” do in a given situation. It is a sign of “authentic demand”. You build things to serve that.

People are generally indifferent to new things, but will grab for a solution when encountering a problem. They can’t not, they must, the problem has to be solved, for some classes of problems. Or something like that, I read the book a while back.

Inherent necessity is exactly it.

We’re indifferent to most things, but something slap us in the face. Grab us by the throat. We have to pay attention.

Do that.