This morning, I dreamed me and my business partner were on a mountain slope, surrounded by thick fog. Suddenly from behind us, a cat emerged, running really fast, looking absurd in this oxygen-rich air that immediately invigorates you in those green mountains.

The cat wore a metal hat—literally a metal pot in which its little hairy head was stuffed into. It was moving with absurd grace. My partner immediately thought “Alice in Wonderland” when I mentioned this Metal Hat Cat in our Morning Meeting. I realized this might be my dreammaker approving what I wrote in my first blog post about consulting our subconscious for truth. It appeared like a ghost with guidance intentions.

A cat shouldn’t wear a metal pot for a hat any more than a village sign should hang upside-down. Yet both impossibilities accomplish the same thing: they crack the expected, make the brain stutter for some milliseconds and in that space of confusion and graceful absurdity invite real raw Learning and Insight.

The Upside-Down French Road Signs

French farmers recently discovered something remarkable. When they flipped official village entry signs upside-down as protest against agricultural policies, something unexpected happened. People noticed. They remembered. They talked about it.

In October 2023, the Jeunes Agriculteurs and FDSEA farm unions in the Tarn began screwing village entry panels upside-down in places like Mazamet and Castres. Their slogan: “On marche sur la tête” (“We’re walking on our heads”)—a literal visual for contradictory farm regulations. By November, over 10,000 signs were inverted across France, and the protest spread to Belgium and Swiss Romandy. The government eventually scrapped the planned diesel-tax rise—one of their core demands.

What’s fascinating is the psychological effect: When you encounter an upside-down sign, it triggers “instant novelty & saliency”—any element that breaks the learned visual schema jumps to the top of the attentional stack. It creates a cognitive itch; humans automatically ask “why is this wrong?” This leads to drivers noticing, remembering, and talking about it—exactly the feedback loop activists want.

Here’s where the cat in the metal hat and French road signs collide with my work on Goali: What if disorientation isn’t a bug but a feature?

The Elephant Who OWNS the Porcelain Shop

We all know the parable of an elephant who makes a mess in a porcelain shop. But what about an elephant who ACTUALLY OWNS a porcelain shop?

This inversion creates the same cognitive bump as the upside-down sign. It forces you to rethink assumptions. The elephant isn’t clumsy in this scenario—it’s masterful. It knows exactly how fragile its merchandise is, precisely because it’s usually cast as the destroyer.

This reminds me of something Seth Godin mentioned about Claude (the AI). He said he doesn’t understand how they branded themselves, calling it a mystery how the chatbot works with you and develops character. It’s like Claude is the elephant who opened a porcelain shop—taking an entity normally seen as potentially destructive and making it the caretaker instead.

Sand Castles: Inviting the Waves

I keep returning to this image: Build something fast, let the waves pound it, watch what collapses, and rebuild stronger. When teams (or founders) do this ON PURPOSE, they trade ego-bruise for structural integrity.

Think about boys making a sand castle on a North Sea Island. The joy isn’t just in building—it’s in inviting the ocean to try destroying it. Finding the weak points becomes fascinating because you watch how they quickly expand and rip open, destroying the castle from inside out.

The data backs this approach: The “fortress” protect-the-idea approach leads to higher evaluation apprehension, which lowers idea count and diversity. Meanwhile, the “sand-castle” approach of inviting critique early and often consistently outperforms single-shot design on performance, confidence, and anxiety reduction. Usability improves approximately 38% per iteration in classic studies.

The ocean doesn’t care about my feelings. That’s both heartbreaking and freeing. The waves will test your work with merciless precision—Newton’s sexiest axiom playground.

The Effort Paradox: Why I’m a Fruit Fly

Anne-Laure Le Cunff popularized the idea that we often celebrate effort more than results, yet sustained progress usually comes from tiny, low-risk experiments rather than heroic all-nighters. The scientific literature backs her up: effort is simultaneously costly (we avoid it) and valued (we admire it)—the core of the “effort paradox.”

I keep flying into the same trap like a fruit fly with amnesia. I overscope, overestimate my short-term effect in the world, underestimate how long tasks take, and find myself frustrated at my inability to learn from these repeated patterns.

Consider these counter-intuitive research findings: Students who watched a slick lecturer predicted higher test scores yet remembered no more content than peers who watched a halting version of the same script. Also, high perceived difficulty can reduce effective strategy use—learners often avoid “desirable difficulties” because they feel inefficient, even though they produce superior long-term retention.

This explains why Dropbox succeeded: Instead of building the entire product first, they created a 3-minute screen-capture video that mocked up the product before a single public build existed. Their waiting list leapt from 5k to 75k overnight—validating demand without months of coding.

Empathy is Work, Empathy Requires Energy

One insight keeps floating through my mind: explaining things to people is hard because empathy is work. Empathy requires energy. When I think about sharing Goali with others (even my dad), I feel that frustration and belief that I’m bad at explaining things to people. I tell myself I’m alone in my mind and it’s difficult to communicate concepts.

Good information architecture recognizes this reality. It accounts for limited working memory (about 4 items)—users juggle options, risks, and next steps. Cognitive overflow stalls action. Every extra visible choice slows selection logarithmically (Hick–Hyman Law).

What’s fascinating is that users don’t actually navigate decisions in straight lines. Research shows they use a “decision zig-zag”: Instead of linear A→B→C, users skim, jump back, and refine. Linear wizards frustrate them.

So maybe my divergent associative mind isn’t a bug but a feature—if I can design for that reality.

Today’s Tiny Experiment: Flipping One Sign

I’ve been consumed with sticking to this 42-day experiment of publishing daily, making me afraid of forgetting the blog’s intention: to accompany my learning journey in developing Goali. If I do nothing about the actual project while writing meta-reflections, I lack integrity.

So today, instead of writing another epic post (ironic, I know), I’m going to flip one sign upside down in the Goali project:

I commit to sending our current information architecture mockup to three people today, asking them one specific question: “Where does this explanation confuse you?”

This tiny experiment applies both the sand castle philosophy (inviting critique) and the upside-down sign strategy (deliberately creating a moment of productive disorientation).

Tomorrow, I’ll report what weak points the waves found and how I’m rebuilding.

What Sign Will You Flip?

What sand castle are you afraid to let the waves test? What would happen if you deliberately turned one aspect of your work upside-down today to see what people notice?

The cat in the metal hat is beckoning from the fog. Maybe it’s time we all followed it down the rabbit hole of deliberate disorientation.

Assign: Tonight’s Subconscious Task Before sleep tonight, I’ll plant this question: What’s the smallest change to our Projects Pre-Launch Website information architecture that would create the biggest clarity improvement?