When was the last time you spent multiple days trying to solve a problem?
Pragmatism often wins on our projects: AI won’t come up with a 100% satisfying solution, but when a 70% solution is "good enough", your pragmatic brain goes with that one.
https://www.jernesto.com/articles/thinking_hard
For Ernesto Mtz, this creates a conflict: AI satisfies the Builder side (building fast things) but it starves the Thinker side of the brain (solving really hard problems).
In the end, he wonders if there is a way to make both sides happy. And so do I.
I share his "my thinker brain is starving" feeling, and honestly, I'm quite frustrated by what I see around me. People want to go fast, to show velocity, to rush into solutions. This isn't just a tech problem, it shows up in many domains.
But in some of these domains, accepting the pragmatic 70% will bite people later.
Maybe it's a "me" problem, call me a perfectionist. But when I see people settle for the 70%, my brain already anticipates the chain of potential issues that follows.
It's the curse of having strong pattern recognition. Because of that, I often find myself asking to slow down, to at least take time to think through the problem and the solution. I don't always get that time.
I don't think I need 100% to satisfy my thinker brain.
But I do need the chance to do some hard thinking, if only to quiet the voices screaming "this 70% pragmatic fix won't work, because of this, this, and that." Does that make sense?"
I miss thinking hard. (8min): https://www.jernesto.com/articles/thinking_hard
@stephaniewalter a 70% solution can be fine, as long as you know what the 70% is, and more importantly what the 30% is and why it's in that 30%
Jul 8, 2026, 7:50 AM@stephaniewalter related to so much of that until I got to
“At the end of the day, I am a Builder. I like building things. The faster I build, the better.”
The build-ing, as in the doing of the build, is what I enjoy. From a commercial perspective speed *should* come into it. But striving for quality is my happy place and that takes the time that it takes