Dodging the Work that Matters

The most important work is the thing you’re avoiding.

For the better part of the last year, and honestly longer than that if I’m REALLY being honest…

We’ve avoided THE problem. We told ourselves lots of stories that sounded like “Well, we have to do THIS thing first!” or “Yes, we know we need to solve that in the future, but don’t we need to focus on this right now?” We tried shortcuts, and bandaids, and flashy, SPLASHY, pseudo-solutions that in retrospect only prolonged and covered up the exact same root issue that we kept avoiding.

You probably have something like this in your life too. It’s the thing that deep down you know you need to open up, take a real look at, and start down the road of figuring out. But the problem lies in the fact that while you have lots of answers for everything else, you don’t even know where to start with this thing. Let’s call it The Big Thing. The Big Thing gnaws at you. It’s the thing that every other signal goes back to, good and bad. It’s so big that you aren’t even sure how to describe what IT is. It’s like a giant yarn ball, sitting in the bottom of your knitting basket, and you have no idea how it got there, or where to even start with unraveling it.

It’s the thing that every time you think about it, it inspires both fear and ecstasy in a future version of you that will be smart enough, and bold enough, and resourced enough, to do it. You know that you have what it takes, but just not today. You have those other things to do first before you’ll be ready to tackle it, remember?

In your worst moments, you resolve that The Big Thing can’t be done. If it was solvable, or doable, someone smarter than you would have done it already. A lot of people have tried. What makes you more suited than they are? You must actually be crazy for thinking that you might even try. So instead, you look around and follow suit. Instead of working on the messy, real, mind-bendingly complicated Big Thing.

For us, starting down the path of working on The Big Thing couldn’t have come at a worse time. I’ll spare you the specifics for now, but it’s the equivalent of deciding to start training for a marathon the night before it starts…. After you’ve just recovered from surgery. You’re tired, depleted, you can’t even eat solid foods again yet, but you have to start tomorrow. There’s no other choice. You’re already signed up for the race, and you can either decide to quit and not even try, or you can just get started.

The funny thing about deciding to get started is that it seems so small at first. Like after you’ve finally taken that first step, the giant yarn ball doesn’t seem so abstract anymore. Staring at it from across the room it seemed insurmountable, and it still is, but up close and personal after you started pulling on a few strings? You can see the next hole, the next place to start. To any outside eyes, it looks like you haven’t even touched it. Nothing has really changed. But up close, and inside, everything has changed.

The Big Thing we’re tackling (although I could re-read this entire post and insert several other personal life instances for myself here too,) is the difference between this:

And this:

Sure, you can tell that these are a collection of different products. But could you describe what makes them different? Like, actually what makes them different from each other. And why these two groups are related, but different. Or what other random products you could find on the internet that fit in each of these boxes? Better yet, do any of these products in the different groups go together? Or could they? In what specific instances could or would someone wear a sweater from one group, with a shoe in another? Is it random? Or is there something more behind it?

What we’re talking about here is what makes someone drawn to something aesthetically, and in what combinations with other things they’re drawn to will make a product or even something as complicated as an outfit (a collection of products) RIGHT vs WRONG for a human being as complex as we all are. As most of us who feel like we have some sort of idea around our own personal style and how we want to present ourselves to the world, it’s a journey. And one that has probably taken us years to get close to, and just when we think we’ve nailed it, we change. We have new experiences, a new job, a new city that we’ve moved to. And everything tilts just a little bit to the right. As hard and complex as this is for me, someone who cares deeply about this topic and has 10+ years of experience and a Master’s degree to prove it- there are millions of people who have never given this a thought. They get dressed everyday, with little to no care for what they put on their bodies. Or so they think.

If I had to estimate the amount of money and time and energy people far smarter than me have put into figuring out WHAT makes someone purchase a product, or even wear something in a certain way, it would be infinite. Because even for someone who doesn’t care about how they dress, or what they wear, they still have to make those decisions everyday. They have to buy clothing. And even a choice that looks like buying the same Hanes packaged t-shirts every 6 months for the last twenty years says something about them and how they want to show up in the world, whether they recognize it or not.

For me and the rest of our team at Fashivly, getting dressed and buying the things to get dressed with isn’t what we actually care about. The thing we care about is how an outfit makes us feel. What we’ve figured out through experience over the years, is that there is a formula for figuring out how to unlock your confidence everyday, just by getting dressed. We’ve figured it out for ourselves (and are continuing to figure it out everyday as we change), but how do we do that for someone else? Consistently. Repeatedly. Said another way, what is the secret for figuring out exactly what someone is drawn to aesthetically in this specific moment in time for their life, and then how do we source that thing that also configurates around their specific body type, lifestyle, and budget. This isn’t about selling more things to more people. If that were the case, we would do the far easier thing and just generate content and links that appealed to a large group of people, exactly like everyone else. Or we would use bandaids, and splashy, flashy tools that market themselves as personalization, but also don’t even touch the surface of figuring out The Big Thing. We wouldn’t go through the trouble of trying to do that individually, personally, based on only the real aspects of you and your life, not anyone else’s. The goal is cracking the personal code for one specific person, so they can figure out what makes them feel like the best version of themselves, and the by-product is no longer having to chase trends and content in an ever-circulating buy and then discard fashion.

So this is our Big Thing. We’re starting small. Minuscule even. We keep using the term “bulls-eye” when we talk about what we’re working towards solving. Instead of hitting the bulls-eye for just some people, or hitting it after several tries, how do we create a process and a formula that hits it every time. For every person. Said another way, we’re figuring out the science behind how to create the outward expression of who you really are inside.

We’re starting with language. How do we define certain aesthetics, style references as we call them- both with words and visuals so we can all get on the same page. We know that we’re all a unique mix of several, and that interpretation between one person of what edgy means vs another is highly subjective.

If you’re curious to see what words describe the things that you’re drawn to (like artsy vs quirky vs playful, or colorful casual, or frontier noir, or even ethereal witchy) head to Fashivly.com to book a style guide and take our style questionnaire. We’ve developed over 200 subtypes like the ones I mentioned above, and you’ll get to discover your unique mix of them before we work on melding them all together in personalized looks that are 100% You.

Here’s to starting small. Un-equipped. Not ready. But curious.

What’s your Big Thing? Tell me about it below so I can cheer you on too.