Brian Cantoni

You Can Just Do Things!

"You Can Just Do Things" is a simple idea making the rounds on social media: you don't need permission to act, build, or create. It's a reminder to favor doing over overthinking. Lately it's been showing up everywhere — in Twitter threads, book titles, and at work — and I've found it genuinely useful as a personal nudge to take initiative.

Another term that can apply here is "Personal agency", the belief that you control your own choices rather than just being a passive participant in life and your work.

The explosion in AI tools can really help fuel this too, whether it's for building software, learning something new, or writing your first book.

I believe the phrase started in social media. Just doing a quick search on Twitter, here are a bunch of great examples:

  • A 53 year-old construction worker who became a professional baseball pitcher
  • Someone found and resurrected a favorite childhood video game (JAR file) and got it running again with Claude's help
  • First female trainer to win the Kentucky Derby (Cherie DeVaux)
  • Many AI examples, including someone who coded their own version of Duolingo
  • Someone who brought their laptop and Starlink Mini so they could work after hiking up to 10,000 feet ☺

If you want to dive further on this topic, two recent books look interesting:

I recently celebrated and shared this idea at work where an engineer coded up a solution in our build system that has been causing a lot of friction and confusion across our teams. This component wasn't clearly owned by any one team, but this person took the initiative (with AI's help) to fix a pain point. With Gemini's help I created this virtual award -- it could be fun to make physical trophies for this ☺

AI generated image showing a trophy titled: You Can Just Do Things
Image generated by Gemini

Next I'm on a mission to see how and where I can apply this idea in more places. Can this be a helpful motivation or encouragement for people I work with?