Cognitive products degrade as they pass through the process of becoming real.
That’s the uncomfortable truth no one wants to admit.
A thought in your head can feel sharp, insightful, loaded with power.
But the second you try to manifest it into real world
Through speech, a plan, a line of code, a brushstroke—it starts to lose its edge.
Friction sets in.
Time. Fatigue. Physical limits. Tooling. Translation errors.
The idea starts leaking energy.
Most people misread this decay.
They think it means the idea wasn’t good.
But that’s not it.
The process of bringing anything into reality is corrosive.
Thoughts exist in a vacuum.
Reality is full of noise.
So even the best ideas, when forced through the funnel of action and execution, will come out looking like weak reflections of what they were in your mind.
That’s just the cost of incarnation.
While the front half of the process is full of loss, the back half holds the potential for gain.
Once you execute, iteration kicks in.
And this is where compounding begins.
The initial execution will always underwhelm.
It will feel like it shouldn’t exist.
It’ll feel like a betrayal of the clarity you once held.
But iteration when done with intent has the power to bring everything back.
And more.
Each loop of feedback, adjustment, and rework doesn’t just fix flaws
It recovers meaning.
It sharpens. It aligns. It expands.
You don’t just salvage the original thought you evolve it.
Newer and more informed perspective gets involved.
The mistake is judging too early.
Judging your output right after execution is like judging a seed before it sprouts.
It’s premature. It’s unfair. It’s self-defeating.
There will be a phase where what you’re making feels disconnected from what you meant.
Where your output looks like a parody of your insight.
That’s the valley.
It’s supposed to be there.
Most people stop there.
The naive ones panic.
The impatient ones quit.
But we are winners
We keep going until the compounding shows up.
What you want won’t exist right away.
You have to build patience.
You have to withstand the stretch between vision and visible result.
You’re not just creating something.
You’re translating it.
Across mediums, across phases, across your own limits.
And translation always begins with a loss.
But ends with recovery and gain if you keep going
TL;DR:
Expect your first version to suck.
Don’t quit because of it.
Keep pushing till the loops return the magic.
That’s the real process.