This was it. This was going to work. At least that's what I told myself as I looked down at my creation. A big green plastic rake with a cinder block strapped to the back and clothesline worked into a harness. This plow-like rake was going to save me frustration and having to rake leaves in the yard the old fashioned way. I would simply traverse the yard pulling it behind me, and then after a few minutes of back and forth, I would collect the end piles and be done with my chore. Simple, easy, fast.

When you're nine or ten and your mom gives you a chore to handle there are always several approaches. You could perform the chore as you've been shown, and be done with it. You could reluctantly do the chore, taking plenty of time bemoaning the fact and daydreaming about things you'd rather be doing. Another way is to dream up a solution to make the chore easier from here to eternity, a little extra effort and creativity now to save your future self, maybe even others.

In the case of my plow-like rake, I'd of course taken most of the afternoon iterating and cobbling it together. I had gotten something that could indeed clear a short path free of leaves. However, as soon as I got down to actually using the device, the figurative wheels fell off. The rake would clear for just long enough for the pile underneath to end up floating the rake over it, even with the increasing amount of weight I had used. I'd have to stop and reset by clearing the pile, moving a cinder block each time as well. In the end, I could have spent a quarter of the time and effort actually raking and been done. I could have made my mom happy, and had the sense of satisfaction of a job well done.

My mission of innovation and improvement had failed. It failed so badly, it did the exact opposite of what I had tried to achieve. Or had it? In retrospect it is obvious that the seemingly-noble-bringing-sparks-of-the-human-challenge-and-the-greatness-of-innovation-and-achievement is really an extension of the reluctant, procrastinating, I'd rather not do this line of action. I'd set out to make something easier for the wrong reason. I had made wanting to make raking easier the goal, not the actual clearing of the leaves and had missed the point.

Fast forward to now and I find that there are many companys, and plenty of entrepreneurs that are out there feverishly building plow-rakes. They too sometimes miss the point. They have great intention, and many are mind-blowingly talented and innovative. Unfortunately that isn't enough, and perhaps is even the cause of some of the failures and problems.

The desire to make things simpler, easier, and faster is pretty easy to understand and embrace. The danger lies in not understanding yourself and your motivations, and the very real distinction between desiring to solve the real problem vs. the problem you perceive or desire to believe. Experience, failure, and insight are the things that allow people to understand how they get into positions like this and identify/avoid it in future. In my case, twenty seven years or so worth.