50 Arrows
Aim is the part you control. Landing is not.
One strategic signal 🔭 One subtraction ➖ One analogy ⚖️
Created by Sam Rogers | Powered by Snap Synapse | Freely available on Substack and LinkedIn | New issue every Monday (so far)
🔭 Signal: What 50 Issues Actually Showed
When I launched this weekly newsletter last year, I committed to at least ten issues and set very specific targets. I missed all of them.
The only target I hit was one I never set: I do actually enjoy writing this. Weirdly, and more than I probably should. That’s what kept it going past ten issues, past six months, coming up on a full year.
Now I’m at fifty issues, with two more to close out this circle around the sun. This isn’t a retrospective, it’s a reckoning.
The format told me something I didn’t want to hear
The section I designed to be most valuable from the outset was The Human Prompt. Of course this is the part most people skip. The section I added as an afterthought because I needed a visual hook (Analogy of the Week) is the part people use most and quote back at me later. Check this against your own work. The thing you designed as the value proposition may not be what your audience actually uses.
The distribution told me what every operator is finding out
The audience doesn’t want direct email anymore. They want a platform that curates for them. And the platforms are all gates with prices now. Gotta pay to play, showing up consistently isn’t enough in the mid-2020s. It buys you visibility to a fraction of the people who said they wanted to hear from you. If you’ve been pushing on the same wall lately, you’re not alone.
The identity squeeze is real, and it’s not just mine
Anyone working at the intersection of two domains pays this tax. This newsletter was never about AI, it’s about what still makes sense to keep doing and what doesn’t. AI is a major factor in the speed of that change, but it is not the change itself. Writing about AI plainly loses people who’ve had quite enough of AI content. It also loses the AI crowd, because there’s not enough technical promise or clickbait doom. I write about the hard problems of how people and organizations actually change. If your work sits between two camps, you already know the feeling.
What the year actually produced (none of it on the list)
The relationships that compounded came from people who reached out, or who I reached out to, because of the writing. Dr. Markus Bernhardt found me. I found Limited Edition Jonathan after featuring him in Issue 17. Both turned into trusted friendships and complementary work, with more exciting collaborations ahead. The skills, the analogies, the shipping discipline, the 47 GitHub repos that didn’t exist a year ago? All real, all unmeasurable, none of them on the original target list.
➖ Subtraction: What I’m Letting Go
The three-target problem
At the start I set three equally weighted goals for this newsletter. One arrow, three targets. I calculated the average between them, aimed carefully, and fired precisely. Missed all three exactly. That’s not bad aim, it’s the wrong setup. Check yours. We both know better.
The Human Prompt format
The section I believed was the point isn’t landing. It changes or it goes. (You may have noticed: there isn’t one this issue.)
The assumption that I have a traditional audience
I have something, but I don’t know exactly what to call it. How would you describe your relationship to these words you’re reading? Or to me as a result? I’m suspending any assumptions until I hear from you.
🏹 Analogy of the Week: The Arrow
Once you release an arrow, your control ends. Skill and practice shape the probability of where it lands, they don’t determine it. The archer practices with a lot of arrows over time, and carries a quiver full at any given moment.
Fifty issues is fifty arrows.
The outcomes that mattered most this year landed where I wasn’t aiming. I was pointing at subscriber counts and conversion targets and measurable reach. The arrows that connected found the people who became friends and collaborators? None of them visible on the target sheet I drew at the start.
I couldn’t have aimed at those. I wouldn’t have known how. I can keep shooting.
Twelve issues ago in issue 38 I wrote about Fire, Aim, Ready. Start something, figure out how to direct it, deliver that, and you’re ready for the next thing. Turns out that’s what this was. Fifty rounds of it. Yours likely is too, whether you’ve named it or not.
🎵 Closing Notes
I’m genuinely undecided about what comes next for this weekly newsletter.
That’s not a soft goodbye, it’s an honest position. What I don’t have is a clear read on what you want from me at this point as we enter year two.
If you’ve been reading any version of signal-and-subtraction practice into your own work this year, this is the part where you do it back.
Please reply with a single sentence. What would you want more of?
Any direction counts. No reply is also a signal, and I know how to read those.
Until next Monday,
Sam Rogers
Making systems make sense
Snap Synapse from AI promise to AI practice
PAICE.work measures how humans and AI actually collaborate, not how they think they do.
"One arrow, three targets. I calculated the average between them, aimed carefully, and fired precisely. Missed all three exactly."
😅...I felt this one in the gut!