Independence Became a Habit

“I’ll Have to Figure This Out Myself”

For me, independence has never meant standing alone. I like people, collaboration, ideas, and building things together. But I have always struggled with the passivity that appears when people wait for someone else to start thinking for them. If I see a problem, my mind almost automatically begins working on it. What is happening? Why? What actually needs to be done? What matters first? Who needs to speak to whom? Is there a simpler way?

The internal instruction is still roughly the same:

“I’ll have to figure this out myself.”

Not as martyrdom. Not because I believe I must do everything alone. More as a basic attitude: I can start somewhere.

Give Me the Problem

That has followed me throughout my working life. I have worked in environments where plans matter, but where reality always has the final word. Productions, events, technology, logistics, and people never behave exactly as they do on paper. A delivery is late. A drawing is wrong. An artist changes something. The weather shifts. Someone forgets a detail. Time starts disappearing.

At that point, it helps very little to observe that reality is not following the plan.

Someone has to act.

That is where another sentence describes me well:

“Give me the problem. Give me the conditions. Then I’ll solve it.”

That does not mean I always know the answer from the beginning. Often, nobody does. The difference is that I do not need the entire solution completed before I begin. I need to understand the goal, the limitations, and the important conditions. Then the solution can emerge.

When Thinking Must Lead to Action

That is also why I have never been particularly impressed by complicated structures simply because they are complicated. I appreciate organization, clear responsibilities, and good processes. But an organization must help people do the work. When the system begins to exist mainly for its own sake, I quickly lose patience.

There are situations where people sit around a table and already know what the problem is. Everyone knows, more or less, what needs to happen. Still, the discussion continues. More meetings. More emails. More presentations. More people who need to be informed before anyone dares to press the button.

That is when another sentence often appears in my head:

“But we already know what needs to be done. Do it.”

That may be the core of pragmatic autonomy. It is not resistance to analysis. Analysis matters. It is not resistance to planning. Planning matters. But there comes a point when more planning no longer improves the decision. At that point, planning becomes a way of delaying responsibility for actually doing something.

I want thinking to lead to action.

Reality Matters More Than the Organization Chart

I have always been interested in how systems connect, but rarely in systems for their own sake. I want to understand the function. In real life, problems rarely respect the organization chart.

A technical problem may actually be a communication problem. A logistics problem may really be a decision-making problem. A financial problem may be a design problem. A conflict between two people may exist because responsibility was never clearly defined.

That is why I have often moved between different roles and disciplines. For me, the question is less:

Whose desk does this belong on?

And more:

What does the whole system need in order to work?

In some organizations, people spend a remarkable amount of energy explaining why a problem technically belongs to someone else. I have never understood that instinct very well. The problem still exists, regardless of who formally owns it.

If I can help solve it, I would rather start there.

I Need the Direction, Not a Manual

I work best when I understand why something needs to be done. I rarely need a twenty-page manual explaining every step. Give me the goal. Explain the limitations. Tell me what absolutely cannot go wrong. Then I would usually rather find the way myself.

That is where the sentence “Give me the problem. Give me the conditions. Then I’ll solve it.” becomes more than a working method. It is also a way of dealing with life.

Because life almost never comes with exact instructions. You move. You change direction. A project ends. A collaboration changes. The economy looks different. An idea does not work. Someone you counted on disappears. A new opportunity suddenly appears from nowhere.

There is no project manual for that.

You have the conditions you have.

And you start there.

Change the Plan When Reality Changes

There is a strange idea that consistency always means holding on. I do not believe that. If reality changes, the plan must be allowed to change as well. That is not inconsistency. It is rational.

I have seen people continue with projects, collaborations, and ideas long after they themselves have understood that things are no longer working. They continue because they have already invested so much time. Then they invest even more time defending the time they have already invested.

Suddenly, several years have passed.

I try to ask a different question:

If I were standing here today and making this decision from scratch, would I still choose the same path?

If the answer is no, there is a reason to think again.

That does not mean giving up the moment something becomes difficult. Difficulty is often the work itself. But there is a very important difference between:

This is difficult.

and:

This is wrong.

Learning to feel that difference is part of independence.

Chaos Can Be Sorted

After many years in situations where many things happen at the same time, I have learned something else: chaos can often be sorted.

When something goes wrong, you do not need to solve everything simultaneously. What is urgent? What can wait? What affects other things? What can be solved in five minutes? What needs to be escalated? Who needs information right now?

They are simple questions, but they create structure.

I think this also comes from that old reflex:

“I’ll have to figure this out myself.”

When you become used to understanding situations early in life, it becomes less frightening when the world does not behave according to plan.

You do not need to control everything.

It is often enough to be able to orient yourself.

Independence Is Not Isolation

Being independent does not mean refusing help. I have always depended on other people’s knowledge and experience, just as other people have sometimes depended on mine. The best collaborations happen when several independent people contribute different things.

What I struggle with is not dependency.

It is helplessness as a working method.

I appreciate people who arrive with questions, ideas, and possible solutions. Nobody needs to know exactly what should be done. But I like people who think.

The best collaboration for me is not:

“Tell me exactly what to do.”

It is:

“This is the situation. I see three possible options. What do you think?”

That is when something happens.

That is when you build together.

Time Is the Real Currency

As you get older, your perspective on independence changes. When you are younger, freedom is often about possibilities: travelling, changing jobs, trying something, starting something, saying yes. Later in life, freedom becomes just as much about the ability to say no.

No to projects that do not feel right.

No to people who consume enormous amounts of energy while creating very little.

No to systems that make simple things unnecessarily complicated.

No to spending years of your life on something simply because you once decided to do it.

Time becomes an increasingly obvious currency.

And then the question becomes:

What is worth my time?

That may be one of the most important questions I ask myself today.

I still want to create. I still want to think. I still want to develop ideas and meet interesting people. I still want to start things that perhaps did not exist yesterday. But I feel less and less need to do things simply because someone else believes that is what I should be doing.

Entrepreneurship Without Building an Empire

This also affects how I think about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is often described as building companies, hiring people, scaling, and growing. That can certainly be entrepreneurship. But it is not the only form.

For me, entrepreneurship may be even more about seeing something that does not work and imagining how it could work instead.

An empty place.

A badly functioning structure.

A person with potential.

A city with an opportunity.

A technology that suddenly makes something possible that was impossible before.

That is where the thought begins:

Could something be done with this?

And then comes the next reflex:

Okay. How?

I do not need to own everything I help create. I do not need to run every idea for twenty years. Sometimes my role may simply be to set something in motion.

The Latchkey Kid Became an Adult

When I look back, I think the term “latchkey kid” says more than it appears to say. It was not only about being able to make something to eat or spending a few hours alone after school. It trained a way of relating to the world.

I can try.

I do not have to wait.

I can find out.

I’ll have to figure this out myself.

That attitude can go too far. You can become bad at asking for help. You can become impatient with people who need more structure. You can sometimes take responsibility for problems that should really belong somewhere else.

But fundamentally, I am grateful for it.

It has allowed me to move between different worlds, professions, projects, people, and places without needing to know exactly how everything will end.

I rarely need the whole map.

I need to know roughly where I am going.

Then I can start walking.

Pragmatic Autonomy

That is why the expression “pragmatic autonomy” resonates with me.

Pragmatic autonomy.

Independence that is not about being rebellious for the sake of being rebellious, but about wanting things to work.

It is:

“I’ll have to figure this out myself.”

It is:

“Give me the problem. Give me the conditions. Then I’ll solve it.”

And sometimes it is simply:

“But we already know what needs to be done. Do it.”

After a lifetime, these are no longer just phrases. They become a way of navigating.

I do not need to believe that I can control the world.

I cannot.

I do not need to know what will happen five years from now.

I do not know that either.

What I need is confidence that when something happens, I can look at the situation, understand it as well as I can, and make the next decision.

Take Out the Key Yourself

I learned fairly early that sometimes there is nobody there to open the door for you.

Sometimes nobody has the answer. Sometimes nobody is coming to tell you exactly what to do. Sometimes the plan has stopped working. Sometimes the responsibility simply lands in front of you.

And then there are really only two options.

Wait.

Or act.

For most of my life, my instinct has been the same: Take out the key yourself.