TL;DR: Last week we learned how to tear ideas apart. This week, I'll show you how to see the invisible.

A couple of weeks ago, at the ungodly hour of 3:00 a.m. ET, AWS had a meltdown and took half the internet with it.

AWS — Amazon Web Services for the cave people — is the cloud computing backbone holding up NASA, Netflix, LinkedIn, Facebook, and basically everything you clicked on this week. The internet as we know it runs on AWS.

AWS funnels $90 billion a year into Jeff Bezos’ pockets — that's more than McDonald's, Nike, and Target combined — and it was never even supposed to exist.

In 2000, Amazon was burning money helping merchants build online stores. Everyone was fixated on the same question: "How do we build more stores faster?"

Then some freak looked at the exact same problem and said: "We shouldn’t be building online stores. We should be selling the building materials."

That perspective shift became AWS — Bezos’ personal money printer.

Same problem. Different focus. Billions of dollars.

You think you're stuck because you're not talented enough. Not disciplined enough. Not inspired enough.

But what if you're stuck because you're fixated on solving the wrong problem?

What if your "lack of discipline" is actually your intuition screaming that this project doesn't deserve your discipline?

Every productivity guru tells you to push through resistance. But what if resistance is information? What if the thing that feels like it's stopping you is actually trying to save you? What if your "creative block" is your subconscious protecting you from wasting six months on something mediocre?

You've seen the Rubin vase. Two faces, or a vase, depending on what your brain decides to prioritize — the figure or the ground.

In 1956, psychologists discovered something unsettling: when people experienced the reversal — when the vase suddenly flipped and became two faces or vice-versa — they didn't feel enlightened. They felt disturbed. Because they realized they were choosing what to see.

Their reality wasn't objective. It was their selective attention dressed as ultimate truth.

The problem you're fixated on? That's the vase.

Your actual problem is hiding in the white space you've been ignoring.

"Fill the frame. Get close. Make your subject dominant."

I did that. I created technically competent photographs that look like every other technically competent photograph.

Then I discovered Saul Leiter. He used negative space, didn't have clear subjects, and broke every rule my teacher preached as gospel. He was more interested in beauty than competence. He made the background his subject.

That's why he's Saul Leiter, pioneer of color photography as fine art, and my teacher is Mr. Durant, high-school photography teacher.

The lesson? Pay attention to what no one's paying attention to — especially yourself.

You're going to bookmark this. You're going to think "I should apply this to my novel/startup/screenplay/blah blah blah"

Then tomorrow morning, you're going to open your laptop, stare at the same doc you've been staring at for three weeks, and ask the same question you've been asking all your life: "How do I make this better?" Instead of: “what’s behind this?”

Seeing the reversal is easy, but reversing your perspective is terrifyingly difficult.

It means admitting you might've spent the last three months (or decade) focused on the wrong thing. It means the 42 pages you wrote aren't the start of something — they're the scaffolding you needed to see what you're actually building. It means the side character who only appears in two scenes isn't a side character. They're the protagonist, and you've been writing 200 pages of backstory. It means the "amateur" constraint you've been apologizing for — shooting on your phone, recording in your bedroom, writing without an MFA — isn't a limitation you overcome; it's your aesthetic. It's why people fuck with you.

The faces are right there. They've always been there. But you're probably going to keep staring at the vase anyway because starting over feels like failure, because changing direction looks like quitting, because admitting you were focused on the wrong thing means admitting you were wrong.

So you'll close this window, you'll think "insightful," and you'll go back to scrolling.

And you'll keep building stores while someone else sells infrastructure.

You'll keep filling frames with clear subjects while someone else photographs the void.

Unless you’re not like most.

The answer is in the white space. It's been there the whole time. You've just been too busy staring at the black to notice.

But you're not going to look at the white space. You're going to close this tab and go back to the vase.

Most people do.

See ya next week.

Love,