Why “Figure-It-Out” Energy Matters More Than Ever

Hi there,

The other day, a friend told me about a job his dad gave him when he was fifteen.

His dad needed a stretch of land to be excavated and turned into a concrete driveway. When he asked his dad what to do, he said: “Figure it out.”

So he started digging with a shovel, which worked for about ten minutes before it became obvious how much dirt actually weighs! He called around town and somehow convinced a company to rent a backhoe to a teenager. Then he discovered the cement mixer his dad gave him was so ancient and temperamental that it kept breaking down mid-pour and hardening concrete inside the machine if you didn’t keep moving.

It was messy, inefficient, and stressful. But no one stepped in to rescue him. And no one handed him the right way to do it. He had to learn by doing, adjusting, fixing mistakes in real time.

He is a very successful real estate investor now and he said that early lesson taught him more than any set of instructions ever could.

His story stayed with me because it exposed how many of us are still waiting for clearer instructions, even as the world keeps changing beneath our feet… rather than adjusting to reality as it is and figuring things out as we go.

There was a time when the rules were clear, especially if you were trained in structured systems like law, medicine, academia, or finance. You were rewarded for minimizing uncertainty, not getting ahead of it.

You studied hard. You followed the proven, well-paved path. You knew what success looked like because someone else had already mapped it.

But that world is quietly disappearing.

And for people who built their identity around doing things “the right way,” this shift isn’t just inconvenient. It’s disorienting.

The ground keeps shifting. The tools change faster than institutions can update their guidelines. the instinct to wait for certainty, for validation, for a proven method is still deeply wired.

You can see it in people who are more than capable, more than intelligent, but frozen at the edge of action. Not because they’re afraid of effort, but because they’ve been trained to believe that moving without clarity is irresponsible.

Meanwhile, the people making progress don’t seem especially confident. They’re just less attached to feeling ready first. They try something small, watch what happens, and adjust. They learn by contact instead of theory.

I’ve seen this shift even in places that used to feel untouchable.

Years ago, clients who wanted to be proactive had very limited tools. They’d spend hours in law libraries, copying cases by hand, assembling arguments that often missed the mark. A little knowledge really was dangerous then, because the gap between amateur and professional was so wide.

Recently, a client came in with a motion they’d drafted themselves using AI. It wasn’t perfect. It didn’t replace actual legal analysis. But it was coherent, structured, and directionally correct. The distance between I have no idea what to do and I need an expert to help me and I can take a first step had shrunk dramatically.

What struck me wasn’t that technology had made them an expert. It was that the barrier to entry had moved. The people willing to experiment were learning faster than the people waiting for a new rulebook before acting.

It’s the same thing my friend was forced into with that driveway.

He didn’t wait for someone to explain the right way to do it or for the conditions to become easier. He worked with what he had, dealt with what broke, and kept moving.

This moment feels familiar to me because I’ve lived something adjacent to it before, though I’ll be the first to say I don’t get it right now any more than anyone else does.

I came to the U.S. as a refugee. We didn’t arrive with savings, speak the language, or have a clear understanding of how things worked. There wasn’t a handbook. You tried things, watched what happened, adjusted, and tried again. Figure-it-out wasn’t a mindset or philosophy; it was the only option.

And despite that, I still catch myself defaulting to old habits. The indoctrination of the academic reflex and the professional conditioning that comes with the urge to research a little more, think a little longer, wait until I get full clarity on the next step before taking it.

But I’ve learned that clarity doesn’t arrive before action. Clarity comes from momentum and movement.

And increasingly I’m seeing, the people shaping what comes next aren’t the most prepared. They’re the ones willing to engage with uncertainty long enough for something to crystallize.

They’re just figuring it out as they go.

READER POLL

Final Thought

At some point in life, it becomes obvious that no one is going to hand you the instructions, not because you’re unqualified, but because the instructions don’t exist yet. If you’ve been waiting to feel ready before moving, that instinct made sense in an older world. It just doesn’t serve you in this one.

If you’ve been feeling restless, behind, or vaguely stuck lately, this might not be a motivation problem. It might be a mismatch between how you were trained to move and act in the old world versus how the new world works now.

If there’s something you’ve been sitting on: an idea, a job or relationship change, a business, or a career transition, this might be the moment to stop waiting. And usually, you don’t have to start with a dramatic leap, but with one small move you’ve been postponing because you wanted to understand it better first.

The people who take action now aren’t braver or more talented. They’re simply willing to start without certainty, see what breaks, fix what they can, and keep going.

In a world that’s being built as it’s lived in, that willingness to try and embody figure-it-out energy may be the only edge that actually matters.

Catch you next week,

Shakila

P.S. Here’s the results of last week’s poll.