You’ve probably been told to make a 5-year plan. Or worse, a 10-year plan. Pick a goal. Stick to the path. Don’t waver.

But real life doesn’t work like that. And neither does real success.

Harvard researchers studied high achievers across industries and found something surprising: the most successful people didn’t follow straight, rigid paths.

They weren’t executing a perfect blueprint—they were experimenting.

The study—called The Dark Horse Project—showed that top performers focused less on long-term goals and more on the next smart step. They tried something, learned, reflected, and adjusted. Again and again.

Daniel Pink captures this well: successful careers don’t unfold in a linear way. They unfold through motion—intentional trial and error, one small bet at a time.

In design and development, we already know this.

• We build MVPs.

• We prototype.

• We iterate.

• We test and learn.

And yet, we still fall into the trap of overplanning—crafting perfect roadmaps, engineering pristine systems, obsessing over details and scoping documents… while nothing actually ships.

This is where Agile was supposed to save us.

At its best, Agile is a mindset shift:

• Ship fast.

• Learn fast.

• Adjust fast.

• Deliver real value sooner.

But Agile has its own dark side.

It can morph into a bloated process of its own—sprints full of tickets, stand-ups that go nowhere, and planning sessions that push the actual work further away. It becomes a simulation of progress. And the truth is, a stand-up isn’t shipping. A roadmap isn’t delivering. And planning isn’t building.

Why do we do this?

• Because we don’t want to waste time.

• We don’t want to build the wrong thing.

• We don’t want to create something we’re not proud of.

But here’s the catch: even building the wrong thing is better than building nothing. It’s easier to revise than to invent. It’s easier to fix something broken than to start from zero.

Shipping gives you momentum. Planning without building gives you friction. That’s why we need more than just motion—we need anchored motion. And that’s where values come in.

Values are the guardrails. They don’t tell you the exact destination—but they keep you from drifting into places you never meant to go.

In life, your values might be about who you want to be: honest, curious, courageous, generous.

At work, they might be about what problem you’re solving, who you’re serving, and how you choose to build.

If you’re a designer, values might look like prioritizing accessibility, clarity, or beauty with purpose.

If you’re a developer, it might be performance, maintainability, or empowering the user.

Values don’t restrict creativity—they protect it. They give you space to try, fail, learn, and keep going… without losing yourself or your direction.

Success isn’t about sticking to a rigid plan.

It’s about moving forward, one smart experiment at a time—anchored by what matters, but unafraid to explore.

That’s how you build something real.

That’s how you build something you’re proud of.

So go zig, zag and move forward!