The noise, the shift and what still matters
The noise, the shift and what still matters
I’ve been thinking a lot about the amount of noise in our industry at the moment.
AI, tooling, new ways of working. Every day there’s something new. Something else to learn. Something else that makes it feel like you might be falling behind if you’re not already doing it.
And a lot of it feels performative.
Not intentionally. But you see enough people sharing what they’re doing that it starts to feel like there’s a “right way” to be doing all of this.
I don’t think there is.
I don’t think most teams have this figured out. I don’t think most individuals do either.
It feels much more like we’re all somewhere in the middle of it. Trying things. Working out what actually helps and what doesn’t.
The pressure to keep up
There’s a subtle pressure that comes with all of this.
You see new tools, new workflows, new approaches being shared constantly. It creates a sense that you should already be doing these things. That you should have already adapted. That you might be behind if you haven’t.
I’ve felt that as well.
Not in an overwhelming way, but enough to notice it. Enough to question whether I should be moving faster, trying more, changing how I work more quickly than I naturally would.
But when you step back, it becomes obvious that most of this is still being figured out in real time.
The people sharing what they’re doing are often experimenting just as much as anyone else.
It just looks more certain from the outside.
What actually feels true
The thing I keep coming back to is that the fundamentals haven’t really changed.
Understanding problems properly.
Working with people to figure things out.
Building things that are actually useful.
Those things still seem to sit underneath everything else.
The tools have changed. The speed has changed. The way we can build and test ideas has changed.
But the core of the work still feels the same.
Everything else is still settling
What has changed is everything around those fundamentals.
The pace. The expectations. The accessibility of building things. The way teams are structured and how individuals contribute.
All of that feels like it’s still settling.
There isn’t a single way of working yet. There isn’t a clear “this is how you should be doing it”.
There are just a lot of people trying things and sharing what they’re learning along the way.
Where this leaves me
At the moment, I’m trying to approach it quite simply.
Work out where these new tools and approaches actually add value.
Layer them on top of the fundamentals, not instead of them.
And avoid the temptation to chase everything at once.
Because the amount of new things isn’t going to slow down.
If anything, it’s speeding up.
Closing
I don’t think this period is about having it all figured out.
It feels more like a phase of exploration.
Trying things. Keeping what works. Letting go of what doesn’t.
And holding onto the parts of the work that have always mattered.