The pill of perspective

How to break through the instagramification of the product industry, and make progress towards what matters most

I’m writing this because I’ve seen too many product people feeling stuck and disappointed.
Not because they don’t care.
Not because they’re not ambitious enough.

But because the oversimplified stories - stripped of nuance and context - have made it far too easy for many to feel inadequate, and part of the “rest”.

They dream of better, but they’re stuck comparing their messy reality to oversimplified advice and polished case studies that only show the winning side of a story.

Each time, they read:

“You just need to do X, and everything will be fine.”

Each time they hear:

“What separates the best from the rest is just Y, not X.”

These ‘justs’ might spark bursts of clarity and motivation. But over time, they often leave behind frustration and disappointment for many people out there.

Because it rarely fits the messy, imperfect reality they’re dropped into.

Not because the advice is wrong, but because it’s incomplete.

And when it doesn’t work, or it turns out to be far harder than it sounded, many people don’t question the oversimplifications deep enough. Nor do they stop to examine the unproductive comparisons they’ve made between someone else’s polished story and their own complex context.

Instead, they blame themselves.

They blame their organization for not being as perfect and rosy as the ones they see on big stages and across their LinkedIn feed.

This is the red pill many choose to swallow daily, fueled by the Instragramification of our industry: oversimplifying.

On the other end, there’s the opposite pill.

Where every decision is buried under nuance. Ambiguity.

Every idea is met with "yes, but..."

Every step forward is postponed - indefinitely.

Every idea dissolves under the weight of caveats and intellectual pessimism.

They are no longer trapped in “justing”. They are trapped in “butting.”

This is the blue pill, often taken by those who care the most: overthinking.

Both lead to paralysis.

Both lead to frustration and disappointment in the long run.

But there’s a third option.

An option that allows you to see your system differently.

A lens you can apply to look at your company’s mess, and smile.
A way that changes what you do, how you do it, and how you feel about it.

A way that enables any product person to do great work, despite of their context.

It’s not a principle.
Not a framework.
Not a process.

It’s a perspective.

A different kind of pill.

A pill most elite athletes take, including myself in the past, as a former National Team Rugby player for Portugal - competing at the highest level, in love with one of the most physical sports in the world.

A pill many high-performing artists take.

A pill the Stoics have taken for hundreds of years…

The Pill of Perspective: Acting, with agency and clarity.

Before we get there, let’s make sense of the two pills most people already take - often without knowing it.

The red pill: oversimplification and the Instagramification of our industry

Oversimplification is the creative work of the storyteller.
But turning someone else’s tip of the iceberg into a mirror for self-judgment is the work of the reader.

Understand this:

We are incentivized to create content that flattens complexity, strips nuance, and delivers a punchy, generalized insight.

Simultaneously, we are disincentivized to share parts of the dysfunction in our own realities. The politics. The fights. The frustrations. The struggles that - believe me - are not as different as yours.

I have talked with several Unicorn founders, VCs, and dozens of CPOs working in very successful organizations - and I can confidently tell you: it’s never as rosy as you might think.

What everyone rarely says on stage - but tells you over dinner - is this:

“It’s messy around here…”

No organization is perfect. And that’s ok.

The intention of realizing this is not for you to lower your standards or ambitions. But for you to lower your shoulders.

Because high doses of red pill exposure tend to tense them.

Oversimplification lures you into the illusion of ease. The illusion of perfection. The fantasy of “just having to do X” to work like the “best”.

Most humans, and especially great storytellers, love to turn messy and complex realities into neat cause-and-effect stories.

We love context-free advice. We love “justs”.

Algorithms reward oversimplifications - and so does society.

Simplicity spreads. Ambiguity doesn’t. Confidence and “just-type” answers sell. Contextual nuance and questions don’t.

Therefore, simplicity wins. Who wants to read a book with one thousand caveats, anyway?

As a result, complexity disappears from the content you tend to read or the advice you often get.

But it doesn't disappear from your reality.

You read or hear:

“You just need a strong leader, and X will happen.”

“This successful company did X, and Y happened. You just need to do X.”

“The top 1% product teams do this. So you just need to do it too.”

“You are not doing your job unless you do X every week.”

The abundance of justing-like content is the Instagramification of our industry.

But high performance in complex adaptive systems like companies is not formulaic.

It’s emergent. Extremely contextual. Hard-won, with several different possible paths that can lead to success.

Yet, the paralysis I see in many talented product people doesn’t come from the oversimplifications themselves, necessarily.

It comes from blindly comparing their imperfect day-to-day reality to these highlight reels of others, and all of these “justs”.

It comes from falling hostage to the oversimplified advice.

The paralysis comes from obsessing over the end state of someone’s perceived success, rather than focusing on the baby steps required to translate that advice into action, in a way that fits their reality - if it fits at all.

In any field, we should learn from the best. Aspire to the highest standards. This is extremely important.

But most elite athletes know the danger in trading inspiration and learning for obsessive comparison, fueled by self-judgment.

These are very different things…

Some of the most successful athletes I know rarely compare themselves to others. I never did either, not even when I competed against some of the very best players in the world, who were preparing for the Olympic Games.

Instead, they compare themselves to who they were yesterday.

They get inspired by the best, they learn, they observe, they dream high - but then focus on their own process and on what’s in front of them. They focus on their own journey over the destination - and on the joy that approach brings to their lives.

“I finished in 6th place in this marathon, but it was a beautiful race… It was a beautiful race regardless of the position, or any result. It was beautiful because I finished, and because I was running with my values - the whole time.”

Eliud Kipchoge, one of the best marathon runners of all time

The most successful artists - and those who do not burn out - understand that growth comes from within.

It comes from perfecting their craft and focusing on creating with freedom - detached from how it’s perceived or benchmarked by others. Detached from the output and the outcomes. Yes, inspired by others at times - but detached from how others approach their craft and any possible adopted rules that have emerged over time.

“Mistaking adopted rules for absolute truths, having goals so ambitious you can’t begin, and thinking you can only do your best work in certain conditions - are all thoughts that are not conducive to the work”

Rick Rubin, one of the greatest record producers of all time

Some of the highest-performing and happiest people master the dance of seeking inspiration from the best and then, immediately after, focusing on their next step within their control.

But people who have taken the red pill for too long may mistake this philosophy for a lack of ambition.

It is, after all, not the loudest approach to have - that’s true.

But to mistake the quiet wisdom of focusing on what’s within one’s control, grounded in one’s reality, and detached from external expectations - for lack of ambition, is to overlook the deeper form of aspiration. The kind that doesn't crave applause.

It is to misunderstand that discipline and detachment are the engines of sustainable ambition - the kind you’ll need to persevere over a long period.

The kind of ambition that leads you to take one ordinary action, every single day, for many years, towards something you truly believe in and care about.

The most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary.

Angela Duckworth, one of the leading academic researchers in High-performance

To not understand that the wisest minds have the ability to seek inspiration and to learn from others, without having to compare themselves to others - is to mistake the act of learning for the need to compete.

It is to fall into the trap of measuring growth by someone else’s expectations.

The enemy of peace of mind is expectations drilled into you by other people.

Naval Ravikant, one of the most successful investors in the world

The red pill tries to inspire and instill action for the highest standards. It tries to instill action and ambition by suggesting you “just” need to do X.

But as John Cutler puts it:

“When we ‘just’ too early, we fail to embrace the complexity of the problem. We pick the wrong justs. And we kick off a cycle of disappointment and reactivity.”

While the red pill may motivate some people, it ends up paralyzing most people - over time.

But if the red pill is oversimplification, the blue pill is overintellectualization.

The blue pill: overintellectualization

When the effect of this pill kicks in, we believe nothing can be known for sure.

You know that “it depends” is often the truest answer.

And so, you begin to armor yourself with nuance and intellectual pessimism.

Every decision is questioned.
Every framework dissected.
Every step forward weighed down by one hundred counterarguments.

If the red pill says “just,” the blue pill says “but.”

“But what about incentives?”
“But we’re not like them.”
“But our culture isn’t ready.”
“But our org is too complex.”
“But this will never work here”

You may be right. Thoughtful, even.

But at the cost of motion.

You’re drowning in awareness.

Taking the blue pill for too long overwhelms you, and makes you question everything - except the cost of questioning everything.

“Just”-type people roll their eyes to “But”-type people. And vice versa. So tension rises, too.

The blue pill prioritizes infinite intellectual debate over progress.

And that too, like oversimplification and blind comparison, brings paralysis.

It gives you the comfort of intellectual correctness, but robs you of the power of just acting.

There’s a different path you can take. The moment you’ve been waiting for.

The Pill of Perspective: Acting

This pill offers perspective.

It makes you focus on acting, regardless of how imperfect your context might be.

It doesn’t promise you any oversimplified truths. And it doesn’t make you spin in ambiguity.

It helps you show up with everything you have, smiling towards the mess, and still choosing to act with what’s within your control.

It’s a practice.
A discipline.
A way of moving through your environment without being consumed by it.

It’s what elite athletes take when the weather is terrible, the pitch is a mess, the referee is biased, the opponent is playing dirty - but the game still needs to be played. And you still went there to win, not to complain.

It’s a perspective that reframes winning. Detached from ego, external validation, and actual outcome.

“I can only control my own performance. If I do my best, then I can feel good at the end of the day.”

Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time

It teaches you to:

• Aim high - but detach from fragile expectations

• Seek inspiration from the best - but filter for your context and what’s important to you now

• Study other’s work - but not to imitate blindly

• Push forward - but know when to pause and which fights to pick

• Respect nuance - but don’t become hostage to it

It moves you from judgment to understanding. From paralysis to progress, regardless of how small it may seem.

From frustration to empathy. From disappointment to curiosity.

It makes you obsessed with the possible improvements right in front of you - not with a grand vision of some transformed future state you so much desire.

It teaches you a very healthy dance in high performance:

To zoom out for inspiration. To ask, “What’s possible?”
To zoom in for traction, grounded in your reality - and no one else’s. To ask, “What’s next?”

To zoom out without floating away in oversimplified advice.
To zoom in without drowning in overintellectualization.

It helps you understand that there are many variables you cannot control, and probably never will.

“Focusing on what you can’t control makes you stressed. Focusing on what you can control makes you powerful.”

Mel Robbins, one of the most successful podcasters in the world

The Stoics would say, “The archer does not control the wind” and “You prepare for battle, but you must not anchor your peace to victory.”

Realizing this, and finding peace in grounded progress detached from external comparison and expectations, is not a lack of ambition. It’s freedom. It’s wisdom.

Wisdom to grasp that your system is broken, and you still have the responsibility to act.

The pill of perspective is agnostic of cultural norms, too.

In the U.S., ambition is often shown through self-promotion and bold vision.
In Scandinavia, it’s more commonly expressed through quiet execution and shared success.

“In Germany, agency doesn’t look like Silicon Valley individualism. It looks like collective responsibility, systematic thinking, and consensus-building.”

Challenging your manager’s decision in the Netherlands will spark a beautiful debate.
But doing the same in China might be seen as disrespectful.

The red pill almost always ignores cultural norms. And other critical nuances. But those who take the pill of perspective don’t judge or neglect such differences - they account for them.

Shifting your lenses

Once you take the pill of perspective, the way you see the world starts to shift.

And the questions you ask shift with it.

How do I escape the trap of the red and blue pill?

Wrong question.

Being trapped in justing or in butting is part of being a human being. Embrace it.

The goal is not to escape, but to become aware of the spiral you might be in. To even benefit from it, in small doses!

This perspective doesn’t say that you must escape from anything.

It invites you to look inwards and move inwards. To a state of presence, clarity, responsibility, and agency.

A state where you’ll know, deep inside, what the most important thing you should do next is - to move the needle in the right direction.

How do you know what the right direction is?

You don’t. Not fully. It’s an informed judgment call, based on:

Inspiration from others. Insights. And contextual action from within. It’s the dance I mentioned above.

You must study the patterns and the antipatterns. Read the books, not the tweets. Go to the source.

Study the traps others have fallen into when walking in a similar path.
The food and utensils they brought with them when climbing a similar mountain.

But the goal is to learn. The goal is not to mimic. Not to compare.

In Product, amazing people like John Cutler, Teresa Torres, Lenny Rachitsky, Hope Gurion, Petra Wille, Christina Wodtke, Melissa Perri, Kate Leto, Gabi Bufrem, Bruce McCarthy, Marty Cagan, Shreyas Doshi, and many others - can inspire and help you figure out what that journey might be for you.

But it is then up to you, grounded in your own context, culture, and values - to judge what you should do next.

A small, beautiful step towards an improved state.

A step that is yours, and yours alone. Take it for yourself.

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This article is highly inspired by John Cutler’s work. And many of these ideas were shaped by our conversations, prior to delivering my talk at Product at Heart. Thank you, John. For your work, and mentorship.

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