I tend to be a big-picture thinker. That’s usually a strength. In my role as CEO—and as a professor—it’s part of the job. I spend a lot of time looking out over the horizon, connecting the dots, spotting patterns, and shaping those inputs into something useful. Strategy, vision, direction—it all lives at altitude.
But I’ve also come to realize that thinking in broad strokes doesn’t always help. Sometimes, especially when I’m staring at a tough or tangled problem, it makes things worse. The view from above can offer perspective—but it can also blur the details that actually matter. And when that happens, I don’t feel clear. I feel stuck.
Not stuck in the sense that I have no ideas. Quite the opposite, actually. My mind spins. Possibilities multiply. Everything feels slightly out of reach but strangely familiar, like trying to recall a dream just after waking up. I sense that there’s a real issue buried under the noise, but I can’t quite name it. I circle. I overthink. I talk it through. I might even build a slide or two. But the fog stays put.
That’s when I turn to something simple.
I write.
And I don’t mean I jot down a bullet point or scribble something in the margin of a notebook. I mean I stop everything, sit down, and write the actual problem. One sentence. Then another. Full thoughts. Real language. No placeholders, no shorthand.
I write until the idea holds its shape.
It sounds like a small act. But I’ve come to believe it’s one of the most important disciplines I’ve developed over time.
And it turns out, there’s a name for it.
The Law That Halves the Problem
Kidlin’s Law says this:
“If you write the problem down clearly, then the matter is half solved.”
There’s something disarmingly sharp about that idea. On the surface, it feels obvious—like something you’d nod along to and then forget. But the deeper I go into leadership, the more I realize how few people actually live it.
Because writing clearly is harder than it looks. You’re not just transferring information onto the page—you’re forcing your brain to choose structure over noise. You’re admitting what you do and don’t understand. And you’re making the problem real enough to work on.
That’s the key. When you write a problem down, it stops being a foggy presence in the background and becomes a defined thing in front of you. It’s been pulled out of abstraction and into form. And once it has form, you can move it.
This doesn’t just work for me. I’ve seen it again and again with my students. When someone feels jammed up—overwhelmed, unsure, or just mentally foggy—I don’t tell them to “figure it out.” I ask them to write it down. Not for me. For themselves.
The act of writing slows the swirl. It creates space. It demands focus. And more often than not, that’s all it takes to get unstuck.
And yet, most people don’t do it. Why?
Part of it is cultural—we value action over reflection. Writing feels slow. Thinking feels indulgent. But I think there’s something else at play too.
Writing a problem down clearly doesn’t just take time. It takes courage. It asks you to strip away your best defenses—your caveats, your jargon, your “we’re still figuring it out” lines—and say what’s actually going on.
That requires a different kind of skill. A different kind of mindset.
That’s where Essentialism comes in.
Clarity Through Subtraction
Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism makes a simple case: we don’t find clarity. We create it—through intentional focus and disciplined elimination.
He puts it this way:
“The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”
That line has stuck with me. Because it’s not just about our calendars or task lists. It’s about how we think. What we notice. What we hold on to.
The truth is, we’re all surrounded by noise. More emails, more opinions, more to-dos, more goals. Everyone has an idea. Every idea wants attention. But very few of those things actually move the needle. Most just take up space.
If you want to find out what really matters, you have to cut. Not just once, but constantly.
That’s why Kidlin’s Law and Essentialism go hand in hand.
Kidlin tells us to write the problem down.
McKeown tells us to remove everything that isn’t the heart of the problem.
In my experience, those two ideas are like a match and dry kindling. The writing reveals the edges. The cutting reveals the core.
From Fog to Focus
When you’re wrestling with a vague or complex challenge, it’s tempting to keep circling. You hold the problem loosely in your mind and tell yourself you’re “letting it simmer.” You sketch it out, talk it through, build another deck, run another meeting. You hope that somewhere along the way, clarity will just appear.
Sometimes it does. Most of the time, it doesn’t.
That’s when it helps to pause. To step away from the swirl and sit down with a blank page. To write one of two questions at the top:
“What is the real problem?”
“What exactly is not working here?”
Then—no distractions, no editing, no need to be clever—you write.
The first few sentences might contradict each other. That’s fine. Keep going. Eventually, something shifts. A sentence lands. The fog starts to lift. The issue comes into view, not as a pile of noise, but as one specific thing.
Maybe the problem isn’t strategic. Maybe it’s personal. Maybe you’ve been framing the whole thing wrong. Maybe what looked like twelve problems is actually one root issue with a dozen symptoms.
Whatever the case, once it’s written clearly, something powerful happens.
You don’t feel lost anymore.
You feel direction.
That’s the value of writing—not as documentation, but as discovery. Not for others, but for yourself.
Writing Is a Leadership Tool
I used to think writing was something you did after the thinking was done. Now I know it’s often how the thinking gets done.
It slows you down in the best possible way. You can’t write in slogans. You have to complete your thoughts. You have to decide what’s signal and what’s noise. You have to know what you mean.
In leadership, that matters. Your job isn’t just to make good decisions. It’s to create enough clarity that other people can make good decisions too.
Clarity is leverage. And it’s contagious.
If you can say it clearly, others can act on it.
You don’t have to be a great writer. You don’t need to publish anything. But you do need to build the habit of writing—to think, to solve, to distill. Because the alternative is to lead from a place of blur.
And nobody wants to follow a blur.
Applying Essentialism to Your Thinking
McKeown makes a key point in Essentialism: if you don’t choose what to focus on, the world will choose for you.
That applies to your calendar, yes—but it also applies to your mental bandwidth. Every day you’re bombarded with inputs. Notifications, texts, meetings, slides, spreadsheets, Slack threads. If you’re not actively filtering that noise, you’re absorbing it. And if you’re absorbing everything, your thinking gets muddy.
That’s why Kidlin’s Law is so helpful. Writing forces a choice. You can’t write ten things at once. You have to pick the thread that matters most. That act—deciding what not to write—is the essence of Essentialism.
Here’s how I try to apply it in practice:
1. Create space
Don’t try to think clearly in five-minute scraps between meetings. Clarity takes room. I carve out blocks of time—sometimes thirty minutes, sometimes an hour—just to sit with a problem and write. No phone. No inbox. Just me and the question.
2. Ask sharper questions
“What’s wrong?” is too broad. “What’s the single most important factor holding this back?” is better. The sharper your question, the better your thinking will be.
3. Write past the fog
The first paragraph might be useless. That’s fine. Keep going. Often it takes a page or two to find the shape of the idea. Don’t edit as you go—just write until the shape appears.
4. Revisit
What made sense last week might not hold up today. That’s not failure—it’s refinement. I make a point of returning to my own notes and rewriting them as I learn more. Clarity isn’t a one-time event. It’s a rhythm.
When You Feel Stuck
The next time you feel overwhelmed—when the team is stalled, when the direction feels off, when you can’t tell if you’re missing something or just overthinking—don’t jump into action right away.
Stop.
Sit.
Take out a blank page and ask yourself the question you’ve been avoiding. Then write. Even if you don’t solve it on the spot, I can almost guarantee you’ll make progress.
Because now it’s no longer abstract. It has weight. It has shape.
And once it has shape, it can be moved.
This Is a Discipline
None of this came naturally to me. I like speed. I like progress. I like knocking things off the list and moving on. But I’ve learned—sometimes the hard way—that fast thinking isn’t always smart thinking. And clarity doesn’t usually shout. It waits. Quietly.
Writing is how I listen.
And it’s how I lead.
Not every day. Not perfectly. But more often than not, when I’ve made a good decision or helped the team find the way forward, it started the same way: with a quiet question and a blank page.
That’s part of the culture we’ve tried to build at B:Side.
We don’t chase everything. We don’t confuse activity with progress.
We pause. We write. We subtract.
And then—with clarity—we move.
Because when the problem is written clearly, the matter is already half solved.