The Indiefield Blog

Who owns your digital breadcrumbs - what you buy, where you go, who you know? Spoiler: not you. But what if it was?

Richard Thaler suggests you should own your data: call logs, credit card history, all of it. Then, you could shop it around for better deals or smarter services. It's not just a nice idea - it's inevitable. Imagine apps that track your habits, save you money, and put you in control.

Entrepreneurs, don't wait for laws to catch up. Data about data is gold, and siding with the people who create it? Priceless.

The industrial age ran on "do this or else": show up on time or the boss will get mad, work harder and maybe get a raise. In sport coaches exist to scare or cheer teams into winning. But today? That playbook's outdated.

Factory jobs are fading, and big paydays or Twitter applause don't show up fast (or last). Now, the real Most Valuable Players are self-motivated. They dive into projects, push themselves harder than any coach could, and don't need a pat on the back to keep going. Passion beats pep talks in this economy.

Spoiler: it's never done. Never. So stop asking.

The real question is: when is it good enough?

For perfectionists, "good enough" means it clears the bar you set. Anything beyond that? That's not polishing it's procrastination with a fancier name.

Don't like your definition of "good enough"? Fine, tweak it. But remember, the goal isn't perfect. The goal is to release your product into the wild before you turn into that person endlessly tweaking a draft that no one's ever going to see.

Chasing popularity is a never-ending race. Trends fade, attention shifts, and what's hot today is forgotten tomorrow. The problem? Popularity is fickle, and trying to please everyone often means pleasing no one.

Instead, focus on creating something that truly resonates with your audience. When you deliver real value, whether it's through your art, work, or product, you build trust, loyalty, and meaning. This kind of connection lasts longer than a moment in the spotlight.

Popularity might get you applause, but value earns you a standing ovation from the people who matter most. Skip the trends and do the work that makes a difference.

An adopter actively seeks out new ideas and finds ways to make them succeed. An adapter, however, tolerates change only when absolutely necessary and usually with reluctance.

Adopting is playing offense, fuelled by curiosity and a willingness to explore. Adapting is playing defence, often driven by fear or a desire to avoid inconvenience.

Here's the kicker: selling to adapters is a tough game. They're not looking for innovation, they're looking for the easiest way to maintain the status quo. Adopters, on the other hand, are ready to take the leap.

Here's how to build a reputation that makes people sit up and take notice:

• When someone asks you a question, you deliver an answer bigger, bolder, and more insightful than they ever imagined.
• When someone hands you a project, you come back with a plan that's so ambitious it's thrilling (and maybe a little intimidating).
• When you commit to a project, you see it through with no excuses, no loose ends.

With a reputation like that, what kind of opportunities will come your way? The challenging, high-stakes, and game-changing ones. You won't just be part of the crowd - you'll be the one everyone turns to when it really matters.

Right now, the economy thrives on messy competition - businesses and products battling for attention, shelf space, and profits. It's wasteful, unpredictable, and often inefficient. The internet has made this competition even fiercer, with platforms like eBay and Google pitting buyers and sellers against each other.

But what if we flipped the script and used technology to create smarter coordination instead? Take Kickstarter: it lets creators gauge interest and secure funding before they produce anything. Or imagine using similar tools to fill restaurant tables, sell soon-to-expire goods, or optimise event attendance.

By understanding buyer preferences in advance, we can reduce waste, lower costs, and make things run smoother for everyone. The future of the economy isn’t just about competing harder. It's about coordinating better, creating less waste, and giving consumers more power.

And let's be honest, they don't accomplish much. Even the most polished and convincing excuses rarely lead to meaningful progress.

Explanations, on the other hand, are both rare and valuable.

But the real game-changers are accurate predictions and insightful observations. Those are the skills that set you apart and make a lasting impact.

Spoiler: we're paying for the news.

There's not some mysterious force beaming headlines into our brains - we pay for it, with our money or attention. And what are we buying? Shouting heads, shallow takes, and the latest "scandal-gate". We think we're paying for hard-hitting journalism, but... nope. It's like ordering a gourmet meal and getting fast food.

Almost everything else we buy has gotten better over the years. Has the news? Some outlets aim high, but too many are racing to the bottom and winning that race feels like losing. So next time you scroll, ask yourself: "Wait, I paid for this?"

Putting your final demands on the table at the last minute is traditionally a successful negotiating strategy. It's at the last minute that people are focused, that the stakes are at their highest and when you're the most likely to extract concessions.

The first problem with this is that the professional negotiator on the other side has precisely the same tactic, so it's hard to use it productively.

Secondly, and more importantly, if the relationship is to persist, if you are in this for the long haul, it's essential to recognise that this brinksmanship costs both sides. It makes the pie smaller and it makes it more difficult for you to build something strong, durable, and happy going forward.

Most consumers are complaining to the wrong companies about the wrong things.

There are many (usually large) organisations that shut out consumers. There are politicians who don't listen. There are companies that are wilfully isolated. These are not the people getting yelled at.

So we all yell at the few companies that are actually trying and actually listening, rewarding their goodwill with a flogging. This needs to change.

In a way we are all programmers now. We all have to decide what to post next, what to point to next, what to launch next.

Is there a skill in dreaming up what happens next and what the sequence should be? I think there is. Yes, you must do great work. You also need to figure out how to program for your audience, even if the audience is only one person.

A company uses structure and resources and power to make things happen. They hire people, issue policies, buy things, build things, earn market share and get things done for their clients.

If you only show up when you want something, people will catch on. If you only learn the minimum amount necessary to get over the next hurdle, you'll fall behind.

If short term choices leave you focused on the urgent, you'll almost never get around to doing the important. A flustered programmer who grabs some online code for a short term fix with no real understanding of its impact or inner workings will be in the same chaotic state at some point in the future.

So make sure you do more than the minimum if you truly want to succeed.

The real point of the exercise is to build a company that makes a difference. To care a lot about who your clients are and why (or if) they're happy and if you are making a real difference for them through the work you do.

A shortcut to client and colleague intimacy is to respond in real time. A phone call is more human than an email. On the other hand, when you do your work on someone else's schedule, your productivity plummets, because you are responding to the urgent, not the important, and your rhythm is shot.

The trick is to sort by how important it is that your interactions be intimate. Build blocks of time to do serious work, work that's not interrupted by people who need to hear from you in real time. Not doing this is killing your ability to do great work.

An email inbox has been aptly described as the to-do list that anyone in the world can add an item to. If you're not careful, it can gobble up most of your working week. Then you've become a reactive robot responding to other people's requests, instead of a proactive agent addressing your own true priorities. This is not good.

Not all disasters can be avoided. Not all disasters are fatal. If you accept these two truths, your approach to risk will change.

If you build a disaster-tolerant company you will be more willing to challenge the fates and won't hide from things. The disaster-tolerant approach means that you can focus on the upside of risk instead of obsessing about the worst possible outcome.

And once you do that, the upside is more likely to occur. That outcome you were so afraid of isn't so bad, and once you realise you can tolerate it, it's (amazingly, perversely and ironically) less likely to happen.

Being ignored is the same as failure. So you need to not be ignored.

Most people, most of the time, don't buy things if there's a free substitute available. Millions will walk by a painting in a museum, but very few have the prints in their homes. Seeing something for free aids its discovery. It will attract attention, spread and then, lead to some portion of the masses actually buying something. What's easy to overlook is that a leap is necessary for the last step to occur. As we've made it easier for ideas to spread digitally, we've actually amplified the gap between free and paid.

Taylor Swift's music is basically free. It's the concerts and films that cost money. McKinsey & Company's consulting philosophy is free, it's the bespoke work that costs money. Watching a movie on Netflix is free - once you pay to belong. Playing golf at the local public course is pretty cheap, it's membership in the fancy club that costs money. The free culture is here and it's getting more pervasive.

The brutal economics of discovery combined with no marginal cost create a relentless path toward free, which deepens the gap. Going forward, many things that can be free, will be.

You don't know what to do.

You don't know how to do it.

You don't have the authority or the resources to do it.

You're afraid.

Once you figure out what needs to be fixed, it's far easier to find the solution (or decide to work on a different problem). Stuck is a state of mind, and it's fixable.