Thinkers vs Doers

For the longest time I was confused. I thought I was both. It wasn't clear to me that either skill might be more important. There are certainly arguments for each.

For example, maybe doing is more important. If we're constantly thinking, we'll just make to-do lists all day without ever starting them, right? To succeed we should mostly just do stuff, in order to accumulate experience and skills.

This is generally good advice. By doing projects, you can learn about yourself and the world, in a compounding journey. Many wise folks encourage us to ship early and often as the main mechanism of progress in our hobbies, career, etc.

On the other hand, there's the story of the woodcutter and the big tree with twin trunks. He chops day and night, but it takes him 25 days of hardcore work to hack through just the first trunk. He's exhausted but proud of his labor.

Meanwhile another woodcutter sits and sharpens his ax for 7 days and 7 nights. On the 8th day, he gives 3 mighty sharp chops and cuts clean through the other trunk! Turns out that one is even bigger, but he only needed a fraction of the time.

I've been impressed with certain people who seem to get things right on their first try. They might launch a company to do $1,000,000 of revenue in 6 months at age 23, whereas it took me 6+ years to do that, and now I'm 29 going on 30.

A successful founder friend once told me: "Andy, I've never met anyone smart who was willing to work hard, and didn't succeed eventually...as long as they don't get in their own way."

My ex-cofounder Austin is a true doer. He's obsessed with building product and doesn't like thinking too hard beyond the next step. He responds instantly to messages, day or night. His biggest bottleneck is usually others lagging behind. I respect his operational abilities immensely.

My brain is addicted to chess. I often overthink about how to set everything up for 5 years down the road. As a result, I've made mistakes in not pushing our team hard enough. We didn't always do things with the necessary vigor that those tasks strategically deserved that day.

I've crafted my new job to mesh with my disposition in a way my previous role did not. As a thinker, I now understand that I should just write and teach and learn and work primarily with ideas. It's pure, it's clean, it's elegant and simple. Well, maybe it's complex, but at least it's straightforward in my mind...

Historically, thinking is cheap. They say most accomplishments stem from 99% execution. The world always needs more doers.

But now that AI is going to do more and more of the doing, the best doers might lean in the other direction and start to become thinkers again. I'm curious about this trend and how it impacts my professional identity, hopefully ahead of the curve.

Which describes you best, if you could only pick one?

For doers, the failure mechanism is to do the wrong things over and over, never pausing to think or change direction. This is the woodcutter who doesn't ever learn to sharpen his ax.

For thinkers, the failure mechanism is to think too much, without ever doing anything at all. This is the woodcutter who enjoys sharpening but doesn't fell trees.

There's a chicken and egg dynamic to thinking and doing, but it helps to know which one you are naturally stronger at, so you don't accidentally get in your own way.

Personally, after going through a few phases as both a doer and a thinker, now I'd be tempted to just use a chainsaw on day 1.

Think about what you're doing, and do what you're thinking.

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Thanks to Lucas Kasle and Alexandra Doss for helping review and improve an initial draft of this post.