I analyze everything. Most of the time, I find that things are not optimal (not to say trash). For me, it's really rare to find something that makes me 100% satisfied in every aspect. Basically, everything can be improved and people seem to not care about it. Most people are comfortable with the current state of things. That's why everything is the way it is.

This comfort makes me sick. Seeing suboptimal stuff brings me pain. I feel an internal urge to fix everything that’s bad, not working or could be improved.

I call this the It's never done feeling.

Occasionally this makes me tired. Most of the times, I’m not going to be able to fix or improve what I consider bad, which leads to some frustration. Sometimes this makes other people mad. There were countless times when my girlfriend wanted me to just relax a little about it and enjoy the moment.

Examples

Every purchase I make I analyze the entire experience. If I am at a restaurant, I check how clean every corner is, how fast my order arrived, how was the dishes positioned, how easy is to read the menu, how the pictures in the menu look, if they follow a good pattern… the list goes on. For every single one of these aspects, I think about ways to improve it.

I have the same feeling with my own stuff. When I'm practicing any sport (surf, wakeboard, BJJ, gym), it’s hard for me to relax and enjoy it. My head is always trying to find ways to improve performance. This irritates me. I wish I could just enjoy the waves when I'm surfing, but if I don't have a good performance, I'm probably going to leave the water sad. It's the same for my software projects. Stuff I did 2 months ago look horrible when I look at it. Even this text that I'm writing right now could be better.

The Gap

There’s this concept called The Gap by Ira Glass that explain the gap (specially for beginners) between your taste and your work. I guess that much of this dissatisfaction with everything around me comes from this gap.

A concrete example: I feel like literally everything in Itzam could be improved. We can find a better name, change our architecture, improve the storytelling, redesign our UI, simplify our APIs… all of it. But I'm not sure if I'm able to bridge the gap between my taste and what I’m capable to build (yet).

I know very few people that feel the same. Abdul is one of them. Reach out if you feel this too.

P.S.: I said that maybe the world is the way it is because very few people are so annoyed with bad things, but this might not be true. Maybe this comes from The Gap. Maybe the majority of people are not capable of doing the optimal work. After all, I think it's a combination of both that leads to where we are now.