Imagine Something In Detail

I love making stuff; it’s that simple.

In high school, my favorite class was Ag Mechanics (mech), a curriculum focused on manufacturing. We learned welding, cutting, and milling metal, designing and manufacturing components, and undertaking substantial projects like constructing horse trailers.

I learned a lot in mech class, but what stuck out was the thinking patterns. When you’re tasked with making a horse trailer from raw steel, four wheels, and some ball bearings you have to think about it. It’s a different way to think; a principle of resourcefulness. It was then that I began to imagine in detail.

I couldn’t explain this new thinking process or distill it into a quote. All I knew was my thought pattern had changed. I was left to observe more skilled creators, like my mech teacher, and explore my thoughts.

Fast forward 5 years. Post high school, I delved into programming and spent a lot of time learning about distributed ledgers. The more I learned about distributed ledgers the more I disliked the Blockchain/Bitcoin design. It was so slow and inefficient. I went looking for something better and seemed to find it. Hashgraph, an algorithm invented by Dr. Leemon Baird now used in the Hedera platform.

I reached out to Dr. Baird and asked if he would join me and some others to discuss his new technology. He agreed and we formed a meetup. Speaking with Dr. Baird afterward, he said, “I always liked programming because if I could imagine something in enough detail, it existed.” Suddenly, everything made sense.

Dr. Baird had articulated the thinking pattern I had been learning for 6 years. I wasn’t able to explain it or harness it because I hadn’t fully grasped the scope of this thought pattern. Once Dr. Baird articulated this idea, I was able to fully explore this thinking pattern.

In the years since I started to imagine in detail, I’ve made a lot of things. Some good, and many bad, but all useful in the practice of thinking. With each new development effort, whether digital or physical, I start by imagining the product of my work in the greatest detail possible. From there I can quickly identify many of the problems I will face and address them ahead of time.

Imagining in detail is no silver bullet. When creating something sufficiently beyond your experience level you will run into unexpected issues. Nonetheless, framing your thinking patterns to image in detail will improve your abilities as a creator, whether that be a programmer, an architect, or an artist.

If you want to see the latest project I’ve been imagining in detail, checkout GIGO Dev. GIGO is our take on the best way to learn to code. GIGO focuses on reducing friction for new developers and making it as easy as possible to work on projects. We just released GIGO Bytes, bite-sized programming challenges with our AI code tutor Code Teacher baked in!

The next time you make something, imagine it in great detail.