Low diatribe

Tragedy is a strong word for what happened to my LEGO collection. It's only boxes, after all.

But when you have an embarrassingly large collection of unbuilt sets, those boxes matter more than they should. I've discovered LEGO satisfies two different impulses: the collector's urge and the builder's craft. Building is definitely in second place for my attentions.

I will admit to being a completionist when it comes to collecting. When I catch a spark, it compels me on an epic adventure towards completion. But then what happens when I actually finish a particular quest and, in the case of LEGO, have acquired all the sets for a given theme? I inevitably hold off building any for fear of breaking up the unbuilt collection. It becomes an "all or nothing" dichotomy in my head. It's overwhelming and daunting to think about building an entire theme of sets at once. When will I find a large enough block of time? Where will I display them? So they never get built.

The completionist trap: work obsessively toward completion, then become paralyzed by the very completeness you sought.

Like any treasure-loving dragon, I like to keep my most preciouses close to me, in my office. This underground lair sits directly beneath the kitchen of our house. As it turns out, dragons should be more careful about where they stash their hoard.

The double disaster started with a dishwasher dumping water all over the kitchen floor. The water then insisted on dropping into my office whilst doing its best impression of Niagra. As if that wasn't enough, the small army of mice previously occupying our walls decided to relocate amidst the chaos, using the softened cardboard to construct some really elaborate nests. Respect, but I don't particularly care for their open-air, "everywhere is a bathroom" style of architecture. Thirty-seven of my NIB (New In Box) sets were damaged in the combined destruction. Being LEGO, the "thing" itself wasn't harmed. Those Danish bricks are indestructible. But the boxes were ruined.

As a collector, the loss of pristine packaging, perfect corners, and unblemished artwork should have been devastating. These boxes were more than just storage containers but were proof of intention, symbols of possibility, and trophies marking my quests. All of it was gone.

Sure, I was disappointed and frustrated, but also a little relieved... dare I say, liberated?

I had been carrying those boxes around like Marley's chains, weighted down by my own obsessive need to preserve rather than experience. The "tragedy" freed me from a burden I didn't realize I was carrying. To me, each box had represented a future afternoon of Zen, a planned moment of joy carefully preserved. The boxes were falling apart, but the potential for building remained intact. I realized I was valuing the container over the contents. I had been confusing the map with the territory.

The damaged boxes forced a reckoning with the difference between collecting and building, between accumulating and creating value. I had been protecting the appearance of possibility. Meanwhile, I was avoiding the messy reality of actually building something.

But this attachment to packaging isn't unique to toy collectors. This pattern shows up everywhere in leadership, though usually with higher stakes than an interlocking brick system. Teams that won't ship until every feature is perfect, leaders who won't make decisions until they have complete information, organizations that won't act until every stakeholder is aligned. I find myself obsessively nitpicking about phrasing when I really should be publishing the complete thought and working on the next one.

We accumulate credentials, maintain appearances, protect systems we're too afraid to actually use. The attachment to form over function becomes its own constraint. We spend energy maintaining the packaging instead of accessing what's inside.

I've worked with teams paralyzed by their own success. Processes that had worked so well they became sacred, untouchable. Expertise that had calcified into rigid thinking. Reputation for excellence that made experimentation feel too risky.

The boxes of organizational life are beautiful, protective, and ultimately limiting.

The most growth I've seen, in myself, in teams, in organizations, has come through some form of loss. Not the devastating kind that breaks people, but the liberating kind that reveals what actually matters. The loss of certainty that opens space for learning. The loss of control that enables trust. The loss of perfection that allows for authenticity.

When my LEGO boxes were damaged, I discovered I had been more attached to the idea of building than to actually building. The tragedy forced me to confront the gap between intention and action, between what I claimed to value and how I actually spent my time.

I had a funeral pyre for those damaged boxes. Their contents, the bits that really matter, are now catalogued and safe in bins, bristling with anticipation. I was able to condense two storage shelves full of boxes into two medium-sized bins of bricks. Far more space efficient. More importantly, far more honest about what I actually valued. Some I've built. Others wait their turn. But they're no longer museum pieces. They're materials for creation, not artifacts of preservation.

This is what authentic leadership sometimes requires, the willingness to let the packaging get damaged in service of accessing what's inside. To choose substance over appearance, building over collecting, creation over preservation.

The chains we carry aren't always visible. They look like perfect boxes, carefully preserved and completely unused. We can wait for accidents to force the reckoning, or we can actively disrupt our own systems before protection becomes its own prison.

The box disaster was annoying, but ultimately not tragic. The tragedy would have been carrying them around forever, too precious to open, too perfect to use.

Leaders who mistake preservation for progress, who confuse protecting their reputation with creating value, miss the point entirely. Liberation comes not from acquiring more, but from finally unlocking what we already have. The most courageous thing you can do is open the boxes, knowing they'll get damaged in the process.