Home / The Work You Don't See (June 2026)

A lot of times the hard part is what you don't see. With surfing, paddling and positioning for a wave is much harder than actually surfing it. Once you're standing up on the board in the right part of the wave, surfing is easy.

Similarly, founders think investors spend most of their time investing, but from what I've seen, a lot of investors spend more time on fundraising, operations and marketing than picking what founders to invest in. I also noticed this watching painters paint kitchen cabinets. So much work goes into preparing - removing hinges, taping, sanding, etc. - if you do an excellent job preparing, putting the paint on the wood doesn't seem all that difficult.

Realizing this has made me wonder what other jobs I don't fully understand. I'd guess it's a lot of them. It has also made me spend more time preparing before doing new things, since I likely underestimate how important it is.