Stop Designing for Everyone

This episode is short and honest: if you don't love the work you're making, don't ship it — or better yet, figure out how to love the work before you ship it. I know that sounds blunt, but the market — and more importantly, your audience — can smell half-hearted work a mile away. You can't fake the stuff that matters. Loving the work isn't about perfection. It's about clarity, curiosity, and being willing to do the uncomfortable thing: choose a direction, commit to it, and then grind the craft until you actually love the result. That's the difference between noise and meaning.

Here's the core idea: If you're not excited to promote what you made, you probably didn't make what you love. Shipping is great — but shipping love is better.

Two common traps I see:

• Approval chasing: You try to design for everyone and end up designing for no one.
• Activity without affection: You're busy making lots of stuff, but it never lights you up. That work will struggle to find real fans.

So what do you do about it? Make the work you can't not make — and build a tiny system to ship it.

In today's episode I cover:

• Why loving what you make makes promotion natural instead of gross
• Three practical moves to fall back in love with your craft: pick one obsessive idea, do the research that excites you, and iterate publicly
• How to find the small group (10–50 people) who will sustain you — and why that's all you really need

A quick playbook to ship work you love:

• Choose one thing: narrow the focus until you feel a pull, not a push.
• Make it daily: small consistent steps beat sporadic heroics.
• Share early: get feedback from the right 10 people, not the loud crowd.
• Listen, then iterate: love grows when you respond to the craft (not the vanity metrics).

If you want to make a living doing what lights you up, stop designing for a mythical "everyone." Build for the people who get it — and love the work enough to tell others. Thanks for listening. Tag me with what you're shipping next — I read as many replies as I can. And remember: ship less stuff, but love the stuff you ship.