I almost never start off knowing how to make something better

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By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins


Summary: I’ve found that things improve gradually through much time spent trying to improve (innovate). Normally, initially for a problem space, I have no idea how to improve it. I think it’s unreasonable to expect to have ideas for how to improve a problem space without having spent significant time trying to find ways to improve. Most things that are worth improving don’t happen easily - otherwise it would already be done. It takes resilience. Expect to be stuck at first. But by committing time and effort, you make new connections to be able to innovate and improve more easily.


No nothings or start knowing nothing?

  • Do you know what we knew about improving education when we started Edrolo? Nothing. 

  • Do you know how many ideas I normally have when I start thinking about a problem space? None. 

Improvement Process: 

  • 1. Find a problem space (aka Job To Be Done)

  • 2. Figure out V1 of a North Star (North Star = how completing this Job To Be Done will improve the world… not just get something done)

  • 3. Spend time in the problem space slowly figuring things out, earning little secrets that accumulate. (See: ‘There are no lightbulb moments. There are however earned secrets.’)

    • Normally I find it takes ages to improve and progress is particularly slow at the beginning. However I’ve found there is only one way to get better at something, to spend time trying to get better! 

Ceilings vs No Ceilings

  • 1. Ceiling: things that can’t be improved beyond a point (eg the water that comes out of my tap is perfectly fine)

  • 2. No Ceiling: things that can never not be improved (actually IMO most things such as secondary education)

  • Comment: 

    • I try to spend my time on things that are important for society and can never not be improved (no ceiling). 

    • Things that are important for society = rewarding (eg like secondary education)

    • Things that can never not be improved = fun! You are never going to get bored, it’s endless :). 

    • Done well, I believe work can be ‘rewarding fun’. 

The biggest problem is figuring out what the problem is AKA finding something you want to improve. 

  • And… even once you have found a problem space you want to try move the game forward in… typically “the first draft of anything is shit.”― Ernest Hemingway

  • Not just that… I normally find it takes ages to even make V1! 

  • So the first draft is sh1t and slow! Slow sh1t… or constipation… the way things often are in the beginning ;). 

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  • Trusty Dreyfus Taxonomy tuned to improving

  • Dreyfus Taxonomy

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  • DA morphed for improving in a problem space. 

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  • IMO you start basically all problem spaces at ‘Novice’. While I might know something about building a secondary school textbook I know nothing about being an AFL coach. 

  • I do believe however you can get much better at going from Novice to Master in a problem space, ie no idea how to improve it to making a new high water mark. Honestly I feel that I’m 10-100x better at going from ‘Novice => Master’ in a problem space than I was 5 years ago. That is to say it now takes 10% to 1% the time to get to ‘Master’. 

  • Jingle: the way to building a diamond often starts off as slow and sh1t. A long time * Hard work (high pressure) => Diamond (big improvements)


What is the line at which you have something that will ‘get traction’? 

  • An oversimplification: 

    • Consumer products (eg like iphone app) = when your solution is 10x better than existing outcomes 

      • However this often happens after 10 rounds of interaction in a public ‘beta’. 

      • Many consumer products are free, this ‘10x’ improvement rule is IMO especially pertinent for free consumer products. 

    • Enterprise products (eg like the HR system your company has or a textbook) = when you are better than the existing outcome. 

      • Typically enterprise products are paid and companies (or schools) normally won’t pay for the same thing twice. 

      • Eg typically don’t pay for two email systems, don’t pay for two accounting systems, don’t buy two textbooks. If you are better and doing in person sales then you can normally explain why something is better much easier then ‘I’ll try this app for 60 seconds and if I don’t love it by then I give up’. 

  • What about if you are doing something completely new? 

    • IMO there are only 24 hours in a day and every hour is currently allocated to something even if that is ‘boredom’. So what are you replacing and why is it a better way for someone to spend their time. 


A couple of examples: 

  • Secondary Textbook: 

    • For Year 7 Science typically 20-50% of a class will be ‘teacher led theory’. 

    • This is a large chunk of time and doing it well is clearly very valuable. 

    • When we look at the existing products we have no instant ideas of how we can improve. 

    • What could we do? 

      • Option 1: move on as we don’t have any ideas instantly. 

      • Option 2: do the hard work of ‘earning secrets’? 

      • Comment: 

        • I think that the question quality we make at Edrolo is other worldly vs even 2 years ago. 

        • IMO this has come from literally 1,000s of hours of thinking about how to make better quality questions. 

        • I now love finding a new problem space where I have no idea how to improve upon what is currently being done. Done well, I find learning how to improve so so much fun! 

        • For strategies for how to improve see ‘There are no lightbulb moments. There are however earned secrets.’

        • The point is that IMO it’s unreasonable to expect to have ideas for how to improve a problem space without having spent significant time trying to find ways to improve. 

        • IMO as ‘teacher led theory’ is important we should buckle down and do the work to slowly figure out how to improve upon existing outcomes. 

        • I likely think it will take us 5x+ generations (versions) of thinking about building teacher led theory resources for Year 7 Science till we have something we consider to be a ‘new high water mark’. 

        • The process will look something like this: 

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  • Podcast app: 

  • A way to break down content consumption: learning vs entertainment. 

  • Much of my podcast listening is ‘learning’. 

  • For learning content I thought it would be great to be able to follow people (eg Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Andrew Fauci, etc) when they are interviewed in a podcast. So we built this for OwlTail and while I get how this feature works (I helped built it), new users currently don’t :(. The user experience for people with no context is not great :(. 

  • So we are doing generation after generation of levelling up the user experience.

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  • Value Outcome = 1. Value of feature * 2. How much is understood by user (user experience of feature)

  • IMO we have much improvement to do in “2. How much is understood by user (user experience of feature)”


If you only take one thing away

  • I almost never start off knowing how to improve a problem space. 

  • And even when I try to improve a problem space normally my first attempt is ‘sh1t’. 

  • Slowly, through much work I can normally make progress until I have something that can possibly be awesome! 

  • So, to be awesome, first you must be sh1t…

  • … and make sure not to give up if at first you are shit! 

  • And just because you have gone from novice to master in one problem space, that don’t mean you don’t start off as novice in a new problem space. 

  • You start off with no idea about everything, if you put in the work, slowly you can improve anything!