When I was a junior in high school, I lost all my friends at once.
They’d played a prank on my dad — one that crossed a line — and the fallout ended our friendship. I didn’t get in trouble at home, but I was hurt and confused. For years, I thought it was just teenage drama.
But looking back, that season taught me one of the most important lessons I still use every single day: team design and trust.
You can’t expect the same thing from everyone — and you can’t give the same way to everyone either.
We all have our “buckets” of people: the friend who gives unfiltered feedback, the colleague who just listens, the one who helps you brainstorm your next big idea. Each person brings something different to the relationship and brings a different part of you out, but when we try to make one person (or one app) do it all, things start to fall apart.
Years later, when I began leading teams and building systems, that old high school lesson showed up again. I saw how I was trying to make one person do it all. The frustration felt familiar and I began to learn how to organize people by their strengths and assign tasks right for them.
When I started working more deeply with technology, I realized I was doing the same thing I’d learned to do with people — grouping tools based on their strengths. The creative one. The structured one. The connector. The doer.
But here’s where most people get stuck: they choose tools by reading a feature list or watching a demo video.
It’s a lot like high school me trying to hold a friend group together that wasn’t meant to function that way. I was forcing fit instead of finding flow.
Before choosing a platform or app, I ask deeper questions:
Because the truth is, no one works exactly like you do — so no tool will either.
When your tech fits who you are and how you work best, everything starts to click. You stop fighting friction and start flowing — spending less time configuring, and more time creating.
Losing those friends hurt, but that lesson changed everything about how I build relationships — and systems. Whether it’s people or platforms, I’ve learned that trust and alignment matter more than trying to make something be what it’s not.
We already have enough things that pull us away from the work we love. The right tech— like the right people — bring us back to what matters. Don’t let technology be the thing that holds you back.
If this hit home, I’d love to keep the conversation going.
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