We're not all going to make it because no one knows what they’re doing
Plan Your Next #109
👋 Good morning from Brooklyn, New York! I'm Nate Kadlac, and this is #109 of Plan Your Next. A Sunday newsletter that connects design, creativity, and how you prepare for your next thing.
💡 What’s new?
🎨 Approachable Design just ended last weekend and I was—no joke—blown away by what everyone accomplished during the cohort. Our next cohort will be later this summer. Jump on the waitlist here!
🤓 Learn the 80/20 of design in 20 days. My latest small bet is to build an email-based course that distills the most impactful design concepts in 20 minutes, over 20 days. It’s free to sign up now while I’m building the lessons out. What do you struggle with most, creatively? Reply and let me know!
If you’re a market right now, you’re down.
It doesn’t really matter what kind of market you are in, things are looking bleak. Public, crypto, or corner.
This is what everyone was waiting to happen in 2020, around Q2-Q3, knowing the unprecedented amount of money we were pumping into the system couldn’t last.
But somehow this delayed the seemingly inevitable crash we are experiencing right now.
It’s easy for someone like me to look at the past two weeks and describe it in this way, putting the loose puzzle pieces together so they fit a particular story.
“Of course, this was supposed to happen. How could you not see this coming?”
But, the day before the markets decided to catapult themselves into oblivion, none of us really knew when it was going to happen.
Why? Because none of us really know what the hell we’re doing.
If you were to sit me down and ask me my plans for my own business—Approachable Design—I’d be able to give you a nice sound bite about where I want it to head and how I think I might get there. How I would love to turn it into a ten figure business to level up the visual vocabulary of creators and organizations, and yadda yadda yadda.
But, truly, I have no idea what the hell I’m doing.
The most successful companies in the world are also trying to figure out their next move. What do you think Netflix is going to do after its recent 30% drop and loss of 200,000 subscribers?
They’re going to try and make some well-educated guesses: probably spend less on brand advertising, lay off some percentage of their workforce, and maybe test out some ad-supported model of their product.
But in fact, no one knows what the hell they’re doing.
We’re all experimenting, testing ideas, and making it up as we go.
In the web3 space, there’s a term that has always felt a little misleading to me; one that is easy to manipulate others into thinking there is inevitable hope in projects that have nothing but hope supporting it.
WAGMI—We’re All Going to Make It.
Spoiler alert, not all of us are going to make it. People have been fully wiped out, with some even killing themselves.
The sentiment is nice, but it requires a belief that even the most far fetched crypto projects are sound ones, and because we’re so early: “WAGMI”
Even when our government decided to inject a much-needed five trillion dollars into our economy, they didn’t know what the hell they were doing. Agree with it or not, it’s just not possible to predict what or how the overall impact is going to be.
If you feel like you don’t have any answers as to what you should do, you’re not alone.
So if the leaders of the Free World are winging it, co-CEO Reed Hastings of Netflix is spitballing, and web3 enthusiasts are slinging metaverses like graffiti against the walls of web3, what kind of advice could you possibly take from this?
For one, remind yourself that no one really knows what to do next. Take solace in the fact that there is not a single path for you to take going forward. No one, including our leaders, can truly tell us what we should be doing, because we wouldn’t be in this situation otherwise.
If you’re sitting on the sidelines waiting for an answer, you might find yourself delaying an inevitable change to your own path. The path forward takes curiosity and experimentation, by trying a lot of ideas through trial and error.
It requires knowing that you can’t know. And knowing no one has the answer.
My own plan during this downturn is to read, write, build, listen, make friends, and take small, diversified risks. None of these paths have a defined outcome, other than continuing to plant the seeds of small bets for the future.
What you shouldn’t be doing is sitting down, and listening to others tell you what you should be doing. Least of all me.
We are not all going to make it. Some of us will be left behind because for many of us, we have left it up to others to decide for us.
But if you bet on yourself, and look for alternate paths, you have a better chance than most to find something that works for you.
⚡️ Three creative hits for you to check out next
🏙 A thread on traditional urbanism, or town planning 13th-century style.
A brilliant thread on the differences between traditional urbanism vs modern dis-urbanism.
🤯 You’ve got six months to build up $3,000/mo
Some great responses in this thread:
”You can’t not make money if a) you have thousands of people who want you in their inbox and b) you ask for their money.”—Patrick McKenzie
🍕 When was the first time you had pizza?
Rowan enjoyed her very first slice of ‘za at Rubirosa, a pizza joint in Manhattan. I think she’s addicted.
👋 See you next Sunday
If you’ve forgotten who I am, here’s a little bit about me. As always, my calendar is open to chat about your next adventure, crazy idea, or if you’re feeling creatively stuck.
Have a great week,
p.s. If you enjoyed this letter, would you please let me know by tapping on the heart below?