The best products are invisible. The best workflows, the best systems—you don't notice them. They just work.

Think about your body. A healthy body is one you don't notice. You're not aware of your knees, your back, your energy levels. Those only come into focus when something's wrong—an ache, tiredness, pain. Problems announce themselves. Health is silent.

This is a design principle.

When you're building something—a product, a tool, a process—it should be so easy to use that people don't have to think. No friction. No pain points. No reminders that they're even using a product. Just point A to point B, effortlessly.

the hyper-configurability trap

My team is building internal tools right now. Great! Empowering! They're building it in a way where it's hyper-configurable. You can choose and adjust everything—the x-axis, the y-axis, every granular detail, the background color. Amazing! Wow!

But here's my honest take: it's not great.

It's actually painful. Because now when people just want to get their data, they have to make a dozen decisions. What to include? What's the right format? What color? What font size?

You know what? Screw that.

Just have a standardized format. One canonical way of doing things. Yes, allow for edge cases—some configurability for rare use cases. But take an opinion. Make a stand. If someone needs to create a pitch deck, why should they waste mental energy on whether the font looks right or the formatting is correct? No. Make the decisions for them. Make it canonical. Export the file. Done.

the systems gap

Most people aren't equipped to think in both products and systems. We're so used to grinding—doing work over and over again—that we forget we can build machines to do it for us. We can build systems that handle the repetition, the decisions, the tedium.

But that requires letting go. Letting go of full control. Letting go of fully customizing every single thing for every single use case.

The mindset shift is simple: "This fits most. It may not fit all, but it fits most." And if something really matters, you adjust for that specific case. But keeping hyper-customization for everything? That explodes in complication. We could simplify our lives so much if we stopped equating optionality with quality.

the optionality trap

We mistake optionality for good. We conflate them. More options must mean better, right?

But we forget analysis paralysis. Buyer's remorse. The cognitive load of choosing. Having more options isn't automatically better.

So whether you're designing a product, a strategy, a personal routine—how you pack for a trip, how you go to the gym, whatever—remember: more optionality isn't always better.

the invisible ideal

The winning product is invisible. Easy, useful, powerful—but you don't notice it. People just pick it up and use it. No configuration. No thinking. It just does the thing.

That's how you know you've built something good. When you've front-loaded and abstracted all the thinking, the decision-making, the friction that people tolerate but shouldn't have to. When you've removed, eliminated, and solved their problem before they even had to ask.

That's a powerful product. That's great design. It's the one that's invisible—the one people never have to think about.