GHDR Report 0404: Shrinking The Execution Gap

⊕ show captionI love spaceships. Blame George Lucas for creating Star Wars. This love might be more than just an interest but an actual strength that can be used to reframe my professional work. Crazy? This report investigates!

In my last Groundhog Day Resolutions report, I noted that executing on my goals is still difficult despite being for my own benefit. This is baffling. Shouldn’t I be more excited? Shouldn’t it feel easier? Why does this keep happening? What the hell is wrong with me???

RECAP: The March Anxiety Hypothesis

Last month, I speculated that long-held anxieties and frustrations were generating powerful emotional frictionMore specifically Persistent Demand Avoidance (PDA) which I outlined in the previous report. which led to my sluggish performance. From that, I hypothesized that by addressing anxiety itself I might remove that friction, which would lead to improvementI should note that friction also comes from frustration with messy realities, but that’s a topic for another post..

To address that anxiety, I declared this experiment:

This approach is built on the simple idea that having more positive experiences than negative ones will help undo the expectation of rejection due to me being “weird”. As individual negative experiences tend to be much stronger, it takes A LOT of positive experiences to overcome it. I think this might be a form of exposure therapy, but I don’t really know.

The actual application of this experiment is simply having MORE positive social interactions of ANY kind—not just deep connections:

• Breaking feelings of isolation that drain my energy and morale, leading to the feeling that nothing matters.
• Pushing through the endless mundane tasks that feel like disconnected chores, done for an uncaring audience that might not even show up.

More simply:

Perhaps simply sharing warmth (sentiment) is enough!

Converted into directives I can easily follow, the experiment becomes two qualitative data-gathering activities:

…and…

The desired outcomes:

• increased feeling of connection
• increased motivation due to connection improvements
• notable increase in morale and productivity

Recap: The E-Commerce Chore

There is still the practical matter of making an online store because I need to make money. Not all the hugs in the world will make that go away! It is, however, a task that I find monumentally boring despite small moments of interest. Working on such things by myself drains my motivation rapidly, and this leads to chasing related side projects that simply feel more rewarding because they address the connection stratagem.

I acknowledged it because I have to:

If successful, the measurable desired outcome would be:

• free productivity forms in Shopify store
• having something to publicize, which could build momentum

I was hoping that improvements in connection as described in the previous section would lower my resistance to doing the e-commerce things.

How March Actually Went

From a production perspective, I think the month went okay. My communication directives, being people-based, attracted far more attention from me than the boring e-commerce stuff.

Connection Directive Evaluation

• Hashtags (#smolweb, #openweb, #indie) produced engagement on Mastodon
• Reddit first post made
• Bluesky reply made
• Multiple one-on-one connections made (AY, ML, TC, W8)
• DS|CAFE role reframed as active host rather than passive moderator
• Physical outreach: neighbor w/muffins, lunch arranged with SC

I felt pretty good afterwards, particularly after talking to people directly. Engaging with online communities was more informative than it was engaging. My interest in genuinely social applications of technology is rather rare, so I’ve been harvesting hashtags to help find more people interested in the very architecture of an independent and humane Internet.

Shopify Directive Evaluation

• Domain, customer accounts, and image standards resolved
• SKU template and directory structure built
• studied Shopify template customization
• 6 product drafts created but only placeholder stubs

It doesn’t look like much. Out of the entire month, I spent maybe 3-5 days. In my defense, there was quite a lot of organizational work to store multiple products across multiple platforms with different needs. The hard part was just getting to the point where I had a few product drafts written, and it was like running head-first into a raging blizzard of absolute indifference on my part.

It also occurred to me that setting up an online store in 2026 is enormously complicated, with far more steps I had mentally been prepared for. This is not something to build in a couple of weeks. This is going to take me months.

I am going to need a LOT of motivational energy.

April Complications: Return of The Execution Gap

The Connection Directive seems to be working, so I am going to continue to run with it. I’m unable to strictly quantify the effect beyond I feel “happier” and “more in tune with myself” than before. However…

…and related to that…

I’m going to call this The Execution Gap, defined here as the barrier that suppresses my will to do what I want to do. I have had this problem for as long as I can remember wanting to do things. I’ve had some success developing unique processes and tools. I’ve become adept at redefining the goal posts to favor my perceived strengths, creating practices that are weird and tuned to my own traits. Each of these tactics produced improved outcomes, but the energy cost was high and always burned me out after a few weeks. The sluggish execution on my March Shopify Directive is just the latest one that’s fallen flat.

Keeping the Goal Posts but Changing the Game

Since methodology and process hasn’t worked, perhaps I am not actually aligning with my true strengths? I know I am good at articulating process and running productivity experiments, and these have resulted in good work that I think is worth sharing.

In discussions about finding one’s strengthsHere I’m thinking in the context of SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)., we draw on past experiences to find the patterns. These past experiences for me are Freelance Designer, Interactive Software Developer, and in the past Video Game Designer. I have a lot of technical skills and experience here, and I am pretty good at some of it. That said, I have to admit that I don’t find these “strengths” very interesting. The compelling part was always the joy of finding good people who were also empowered with the skills to do cool things. Having skills myself was the price of admission.

Did I get it backwards all this time?

And there it is again. The desire for connection and meaningful work. That is the game I want to play.

Figuring out how to achieve my financial sustainability goals using joyful creative connection as the game rules might be what I’m trying to do. That is my vision of success!

Thought Experiment: Shifting the Rules of the Game

I am going to share a piece of free versecondensed from a long private ramble I wrote to try to figure out what I was trying to figure out. It is a bit cringe, but it is honest. This is what I think the “rule shifting” should try to accommodate as a given precondition.

The Cat’s Lament

the cat wants to swirl and thrive
not alone not hiding
to reach out with paw
to share warmth and be warmed

the cat leaps and flows
where others prefer not to see
those irrelevant and inconvenient places
where paths of single dimension do not exist
deemed unfathomable and inefficient
those irrelevant and inconvenient places
where the cat leaps and flows

I stared at this for quite a while, trying to relate what I felt here with what seemed to fit. I don’t see digital media designer or online merchant here. None of the old “professional roles” I’ve had seem to fit the spirit of this. What stands out to me is the desire for warmth, leaping, flowing, and being one’s own self.

Recurring Patterns in How I Avoid Work

Perhaps there is evidence of warmth, leaping, flowing, etc in the log of what I actually did last month (right sidebar) that were NOT explicitly part of the monthly tasking.

Many of my logged distractions follow a pattern. In the non-directive things I recorded in March, I can see that these fall into a few main categories:

• building/researching infrastructure to lower friction for collaboration
• things that streamline digital workflow or remove barriers to flow
• doing things to bring happiness to others through shared spaces and food
• writing down experiments and sharing the takeaways with others
• discovery and annotation of cultural theorycrafting articles in related communities

These are elements of leaping (infrastructure, streamlining, removing barriers) and warmth (bringing happiness, sharing takeaways, culture). Flowing arguably is the cycle of leaping and warmth: The leaping serves warmth, and the warmth motivates leaping.

Naming the Patterns

None of these activities are directly related to my financial sustainability goals, but I keep returning to them over and over again because I enjoy them on some deeper level. This makes them interesting candidates for an alternative definition of my strengths:

Reviewing my Past for Supporting Anecdata

Next, I reviewed my personal memories to see if I could find anecdotal evidence. I found a few relevant patterns:

Recollection 1: The Love Boat and Gilmore Girls

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of a really awesome resort or conference center, finding it an easy fantasy to fall into. There is the role of the cruise director on the old TV series The Love Boat, and that of the innkeepers like Lorelei and Sukie on Gilmore Girls. There’s also Lance Reddick’s concierge character in the John Wick movies. When I was an elementary school kid waiting for the school bus, I would tell stories about stuff like this. You get the idea: I like hotels, boats, and events that feel like life-changing elevated experiences. Perhaps getting into video games was my introduction to the idea, the malleable skill that was accessible to me when I was young.

Recollection 2: Tales of Autonomy and Adventure

Though hospitality concepts appeal to me, I also don’t want to work for other people to simply entertain and support them. I am not that selfless a person. Then I thought of the Enterprise D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Unlike previous incarnations of the Enterprise, this ship looks like a spaceborne family resort with nice carpets and facilities. It is a comfortable general-purpose exploration vessel serving multiple missions. As a college freshman that loved all spaceships I had not really appreciated it, thinking that starships should have lots of guns and torpedos so things went BOOM, not this giant floating living room in space…

The idea of a “living room in space” is much more appealing to me now.

Recollection 3: Ports and Travel

I still love ships and other vessels for what they provide. I am fascinated by ship operations, transit routes, and logistics that serve their mission. SHIPS ARE COOL!

I also like the liminal spaces between terminals at train stations and airports, watching people coming and going to places unknown. If I could afford it I would go on a month-long ocean cruise to see if I liked it, and soak up all the hospitality operations as we hit port after port.

April’s Wager

Combining all three recollections into a silly idea, perhaps I can apply these more heartfelt interests to my financial sustainability goals?

To shrink the execution gap, I don’t think I can rely just on “being more focused, disciplined, and efficient in my time management”. That is expensive. If I had connection with team members, it would much less difficult.

So instead, let me try to find the silver lining in the distractions I logged last month, as these are data points in what I preferred to do instead of being focused on what I was supposed to do. If there is some useful aspect to the distracted work, that might be a better load-bearing methodology than “being better at something I find boring”.

Identifying “Natural Strengths”

I know that I spend an enormous amount of time…

• managing my online community at DSCAFE when I “should be working on Shopify”, but I’m not a community manager.
• researching web technologies that could help improve the online experience for people working with my software or website. But I’m not a UX Designer, software engineer, or website specialist.

Also, I am absolutely someone who…

• enjoys the challenge of helping people have a good experience, because their joy becomes my joy.
• gets nerdy about any type of knowledge that helps me realize ideas, for myself or other people, to create an interesting experience that’s memorable, joyful, maybe a bit unhinged and unexpected.

These are all people-oriented activities, applying technical expertise with the guiding hand of emotional intelligence to create experience. I also like to make simple lists that feel deeply true to myself. For example, last year I workshopped what deeply-held values were essential while testing Values-First ProductivityThe deeply-held values relate to how I express myself with (1) Authenticity, (2) Transparency, and (3) Curiosity. See the entry Values-First Productivity for more details!.

Combining everything above into a new list of deeply-ingrained likes, I can say that…

1. I simply like being noisy-yet-endearing for those who enjoy it.
2. I simply like hospitality as a framework for formal interaction.
3. I simply like ships and ship operations as the context for excellence.

These are candidates for a new set of innate, purposefully-expressed strengths that are not simply “bags of skills and expertise” to haul around like survival gear. These become expressions of something that feels deeper.

How do I put “Natural Strengths” into practice?

My hypothesis is that I can change my mental framing of things like boring marketing tasks by imagining them in terms of these strengths:

• Noisy-yet-endearing is the way I wish to communicate. I can be formal when I need to be, but I would rather have the heart of a cat that knocks things over and occasionally inspires good ideas. Experimental. Cheerful. Takes lots of naps.
• Hospitality is a much nicer way to frame online commerce. I’m making comforting artifacts that put people at ease. I’m not making product listings to fulfill some boring marketing step to build a sales funnel. Ugh!
• Ship and Ship Operations harness my interest in engineering and logistics in the context of mission. It’s my version of the Enterprise mission to go to where no one has gone before. The mission wants to move and engage with willing others.

If you squint at that just right, it is all about connection on my own, natural terms.

A New Direction

So for April, the new directive is to “make something like a ship” as opposed to “having a web presence” or “creating a good company”. The mission is actually the same, seeking connection with others to share a superlative experience together. The difference is that it’s on a boat with its own purpose, mission, and the autonomy to move across the uncertain seas of life.

The To-Do list items don’t change. The success metrics are reframed in terms of my so-called “natural strengths” of hospitality and ship operation problems instead of as “self-improvement” and “productivity”. This is a richer context that might help me move along.

The old directives from March become metrics used in the context of my broader mission to have a cool ship that is loaded with amenities and technical resources:

1. Reach out to form more connections
2. Get the shopify product listings out there

Defining the Ship and its various Mission Parameters will be an enjoyable context to give these metrics a sense of purpose, but that’s a topic for future posts.

Reflection Summary

I sometimes feel that I’m indulging creative process over getting down to the bottom line and crunching hard to get clients and income. However, it is a useful narrative fantasy that may give me the motivation I need to live the story. Disconnected as I am now, this is what is keeping me afloat and still optimistic.

I need the deeply-held beliefs and a narrative like this. Connection is the goal. So is doing the work. Both are related to shrinking my execution gap between what I can imagine and what I can realize. In the past I focused on acquiring technical skills. Now I am focusing on what makes me most happily me.

Will this make it easier to execute? We’ll find out in the next report.

INDEX of GHDR 2026 POSTS