Just because you know something is wrong doesn’t mean you’ll actually fix it.
I learned this the hard way on a mountain bike trail, in the middle of a steep descent, with a sharp right switchback at the bottom. I had been told exactly how to handle it. Weight back, look through the turn, brake before, not during. I knew the technique. I had heard it more than once.
I crashed anyway. Three times. I still have the scars.
Each time I went down that hill, I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. I was fully aware. But every time, I still did it wrong. I had the knowledge, but not the commitment.
I thought about that trail a lot during one of the more painful chapters of building FlexScreen.
We worked with a contract manufacturer in Chicago. Early on, it was obvious they were doing things their own way. They built their own equipment, set up their own process, and ignored the specs we gave them. I knew it was wrong. My team knew it. Everyone could see it.
I let it go anyway—not because I didn’t see it, but because shutting them down would have taken energy I was spending somewhere else and part of me was hoping it would work itself out. As it turns out, hope is a terrible operations strategy. It cost us far more than it would have if I had acted when I first knew.
That’s the tricky part about awareness. It feels like progress. You spot the problem, name it and understand it. There’s a strange comfort in that. It’s easy to think that just knowing is enough. But it isn’t.
Awareness without action is just a front row seat to a slow disaster.
The mountain bike left scars I can show. The Chicago situation left marks you can’t see.
Most people reading this have something in their business or life they already know isn’t right. They’ve known for a while. Maybe it’s a hire that isn’t working, a partnership going off track or a conversation they’ve been putting off for months.
Awareness isn’t the same as doing the work. It never was.
Awareness is good. Without it, we wouldn’t know what needs our attention. But action is the key. Because the longer you wait, the more it costs you—not someday, but every single day you know and don’t act.
Move on the things you’re putting off now. The future you will thank you.
Excellent