Low diatribe

I keep several bins of LEGO bricks in my life.

Literally, they're clear plastic tubs — some sorted, mostly not. Heavy. Full of possibility. Metaphorically, they're how most things I care about arrive: leadership, culture, systems, relationships, even myself. A lot of pieces. No instructions. The persistent sense that something meaningful could be built here.

What I'm learning — sometimes slowly, sometimes the hard way — is that how I approach those bins is how I lead.

I've been finding comfort in Japanese concepts lately. Not as borrowed wisdom or aesthetic fascination, but as language for patterns I'm already living.

Western civilization taught me to optimize, to scale, to prove value through velocity. Modern tech culture amplified this into doctrine: move fast and break things, ship or die, growth at all costs. And I'm tired. Tired of the pressure to move faster. Tired of mistaking motion for progress. Tired of the assumption that if something isn't growing, it's dying.

These concepts offer something different. Not a rejection of ambition, but a reframing of what progress actually looks like. They give me permission to build slowly. To value stability over scale. To recognize that a castle that still stands is more impressive than one that appeared quickly.

I struggle with continuous improvement. Not because I don't believe in it, but because my instincts run toward the horizon.

I see the finished castle immediately: towers, banners, symmetry. And then I look at the pile on the floor and feel the distance between vision and reality like a personal failure. My reflex is to compensate with a grand gesture. A dramatic start. A big commitment. Something that proves I'm building something important.

It never works.

The bins don't yield to ambition. They yield to attention.

Before anything else, there's a quieter question: What am I building, and why?

Not how fast. Not how impressive. Why this castle exists at all.

Ikigai — reason for being. When I skip that question, I snap bricks together just to feel movement. A wall here. A tower there. Technically clever. Emotionally hollow. Eventually abandoned. I've done this with LEGO. I've done this with teams.

When the why is clear, patience becomes possible.

Then comes the unglamorous phase: sorting a little, finding the flat pieces, building a base that doesn't wobble. Kaizen — continuous improvement — lives here. It's boring. It doesn't look like a castle yet.

That's the part I resist.

I understand this intellectually. My struggle is emotional. Grand gestures feel like progress. Small steps feel like delay. When I'm tired or trying to prove something, I default to scale instead of steadiness. So kaizen isn't a productivity tactic for me. It's a corrective practice.

What's the smallest brick that actually belongs here? Not the most impressive brick. The brick that actually belongs.

Even then, the castle never looks exactly like the one in my head. The colors don't align perfectly. One tower leans. A wall uses a brick that "doesn't belong" but was the only one that fit.

Wabi-sabi — finding beauty in imperfection. The mismatched pieces give the castle character. In leadership, the asymmetries do the same. Teams that communicate a little differently. Processes that work because of their quirks, not despite them. Trying to sand those edges down doesn't create excellence. It creates fragility.

The imperfect castle is still a castle.

At some point, something always breaks. A cat jumps on the table. A tower falls and takes part of the wall with it.

My first instinct is frustration — not at the bricks, but at myself. I should've known better. I should've reinforced that. But what matters isn't whether I'm disappointed. It's whether I transmit panic or steadiness.

Gaman — enduring with dignity. Staying composed enough that others don't have to carry my stress in addition to their own. Rebuilding calmly. Not punishing the castle for falling or the cat for doing cat things.

When I rebuild, it's never identical. Different bricks. Reinforced in a new way. The seam is visible if you know where to look. Kintsugi — repairing with gold — teaches that the repair is part of the beauty. In leadership, this is the failure we don't erase. The postmortem that actually changes behavior. The history that makes the system stronger because it's remembered, not hidden. The repair is celebrated as part of the structure.

Experience tempts me to rush. I've built castles before. I think I already know how. That assumption is dangerous.

Shoshin — beginner's mind. Building from attention instead of memory. Asking questions I could assume answers to. Letting new voices challenge old patterns. The castle benefits when I stop building from habit and start building from presence.

And then there's restraint. The best castles aren't the ones where every brick gets used. They're the ones with space. Courtyards. Walkways. Margin. Hara hachi bu — eat until 80% full — reminds me to stop at "enough." Not because I'm lazy. Because I want the castle to last.

Some bricks stay in the bin. That's not waste. That's wisdom.

Western productivity taught me to prove progress through scale. These practices remind me to recognize progress through stability. A castle isn't impressive because it appeared quickly. It's impressive because it still stands.

So when I feel the pull toward grand gestures, I picture the bins. I sit on the floor. I pick up one brick. I ask where it actually belongs.

That's how I build LEGO castles. That's how I try to lead.

Quietly. Imperfectly. One brick at a time.