Here’s a recipe for heartbreak.

Part A.

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood in the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

Part B.

“The goal of a Lean startup is to move through the build-measure-learn feedback loop as quickly as possible.”

“Lean thinking defines value as providing benefit to the customer; anything else is waste.“

It feels like those two things are incompatible, right? It feels you’re between a rock and a hard place. You must validate your ideas AND execute with craft and care. Failing to do one or the other, and eventually you will fail.

Yet this is a false dichotomy. It is only impossible if you think you must do both at the same time. A craftsperson’s heartbreak comes from confusing which mode you are in. In one mode, you are building to answer questions and explore the solution place. In the other, you are building to make the best product possible. Do both, but not at once.

So when should you be in which mode? That’s the question I haven’t been able to answer. Experience, I suppose. So maybe heartbreak is necessary after all.