Capability != Capacity
One of the harder lessons I’ve had to learn is that just because you’re capable of doing something doesn’t mean you actually have the capacity to do it.
I’ve run into this a lot with software. There are plenty of things I know I could build. I can look at a problem, understand the technical shape of it, fill in whatever gaps I have, and eventually get the thing working. That part has rarely been the real constraint.
The mistake is assuming that because I can build the thing, I can also build the business around the thing.
Those are two very different problems, and I’ve spent a lot of time pretending they weren’t.
Some ideas are relatively straightforward businesses. You know who the customer is, you know what they’re paying for, you know roughly how to reach them, and you can understand how the whole thing eventually produces the dangerous “p” word: profit. The operational side is also pretty simple. There aren’t twelve additional mini games hiding inside the first one.
Other ideas are almost the opposite. You can build the product yourself, but the product quietly implies less-exciting things like a sales organization, support, compliance, or some other collection of things you either don’t enjoy or aren’t especially good at.
I want to think about things where I have an advantage over other people. I don’t want to play a game where people have an advantage over me. I don’t play in a game where other people are wise and I am stupid. I look for a game where I am wise and they are stupid. And believe me it works better. God bless our stupid competitors. They make us rich.
Charlie Munger
That’s where I’ve had to get more honest with myself.
There are businesses where I know I could handle the technical side and still be mediocre at the rest of it. That doesn’t mean I’m incapable of learning those things. I probably could. The bigger question is whether I actually want to spend the next several years becoming good at a bunch of supporting work just so I can justify building the part I was excited about to begin with.
Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes an idea is good enough that stretching yourself makes sense. But there’s a difference between stretching yourself and repeatedly choosing things that require you to live at the edge of your limits.
Knowing your limits isn’t the same thing as being afraid of hard work. It’s understanding what kinds of difficulty are useful to you and which ones just grind you down.
A technical problem can be difficult and still feel good to work on. A business can be challenging and still fit the way you naturally operate. Another business might be perfectly viable on paper while requiring a version of you that you don’t particularly want to become. I could build and run a septic pumping business, but I'd rather my family not find me lifeless in a Motel 6 next to a note with brown streaks on the edge.
That’s the part I missed for a long time.
I used capability as the main filter. Can I figure this out? Can I build it? Can I compete here?
Now I try to add another question: if this works, what does it actually require from me day-to-day to keep it working and growing? Both as a business owner and a human.
It applies outside of software, too. You can be capable of taking on more work and still not have the capacity for it. You can be capable of learning another discipline and still be better off going deeper on what you already know. You can be capable of running a bigger company and still be happier and more effective running a small one.
There will always be more things you could do than things you realistically have the bandwidth for. The trick is learning not to confuse the two and creating friction in your life where there doesn't need to be any.