PZF I think has 2 key variables: scale and ‘grain’ A project can be too big or too small for its zeitgeist and have a with-the-grain mood or an against-the-grain mood. Projects succeed if they are the right size and with the grain.
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‘Size’ is a range of social scales from individual to collective where coordinated effort is needed. Right now you can’t launch anything so big it needs bipartisan support in Congress. Businesses often have a lower size limit for projects to deploy staffing/capital at scale
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Grain is subtle, and is defined as a bipolar pair of sentiments along with an intensity. For example some zeitgeist conditions will accept either utopian or dystopian ideas but not moderate pragmatism. Some will take joy-to-sadness but satire-to-camp will struggle.
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But if you factor in time to take a project from inception to launch, and time it takes for winds to change direction, you get an interesting conclusion: you should almost never start a project that “feels right” in scale/grain because it will like;y be “wrong” by the launch date
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It’s like stocks: buy low/sell high is hard because “low” coincides with a “sell” mood and “high” with a “buy” mood. Current times seem to call for Big, Serious actions, but those able to act that way actually started preparing years ago when the mood was small-and-fun
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So for your larger effort (2+ years) where you want to aim for PZF in say 2020, you want to aim for the scale/grain that will be in demand then, not what’s in demand now. Court the zeitgeist during its anticipated rebound from whatever extremities it is in now.
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Alt theory is you cannot time the zeitgeist. Just do your thing over a long period, like 20y, and simply wait for your moment to find you. Most people don’t have, and can’t engineer, the freedom to pursue this sort of long game. But you should try to cultivate 1 such activity.
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Long-term projects that don’t meet conditions for agile iteration (zeitgeist has to remain continuously interested enough in your project to provide feedback through the long, crappy beta) need this sort of thinking. The opposite of agile is not waterfall, but internal momentum
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End of conversation
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I've always opted for the contrarian approach. If zeitgeist says Yin, I'd go for Yang. Makes success scarcer, but sweeter - and life much more worth living.
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We did do the second one, the sixties were crazy.
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