Tension is the gap between expectation and reality. Most of us spend our lives saying “I want to be happy” on repeat, like stuck vinyl records. But what if complete satisfaction is actually our enemy? What if that tension—that delicious, frustrating gap—is exactly what drives us forward?

The Archer’s Wisdom

Strategy is the north star of tactics. And great strategy is like a well-strung bow—the string must be tight, never loose. A snapping string means you’re out of the archery game entirely. You’ve lost the human hunger to grow. But a string with no tension is equally useless—arrows fall limply to the ground.

The fletching is your smallest viable audience. The arrowhead is your generous promise. And the string—that essential tension—is what propels everything forward.

What many miss is how the archer improves: through repetition, through failure. Each shot strengthens the muscles, even (especially) the misses. Good storytelling emerges from these trial-and-error loops. The stories worth sharing come from tension experienced and resolved, not from instant perfection.

Mouth-to-Mouth: The Intimate Transfer

True word-of-mouth requires intimate connection. Like that drinking game where you pass a playing card from mouth to mouth without dropping it—there’s vulnerability and excitement in the transfer. If the card drops, people kiss. That’s the whole fun of it—the constant tension between success and “failure” that’s secretly desired.

This game is social honey—a sticky, sweet interaction that people crave because it crystallizes tension into pure experience. It’s the perfect metaphor for viral growth: what looks like pure fun actually runs on carefully engineered tension.

People claim to want safe, clinical solutions, but are drawn to experiences with edge, with tension. The most shareable products don’t eliminate tension—they embody it.

Consider Tony’s Chocolonely, which deliberately molds its chocolate bars into uneven pieces to physically manifest the tension between sweet pleasure and bitter reality of cocoa supply chains. When you break off a piece, the physical inequality reminds you of the mission. This tactile metaphor helped their revenue shoot up 33% in a single year to €200 million—proof that tension embedded in product design creates unstoppable word-of-mouth.

The Eternal Summer Fallacy

My personal lesson about tension: When I first started traveling, I chased the sun south. Bronzed like a thirsty dog, I couldn’t get enough—for three-quarters of a year. Then suddenly, I craved winter. Craved snow. Craved licking ice crystals hanging from some Austrian ski hut.

I realized the eternal summer is a “solution” that turns motivation into vegetable mode. The eternal summer promises no tension. There’s something satisfying in the self-pity of “I want that but I have this.” That tension is actually delightful.

Without it, we become what I call the “Belly Petting Petty Being”—when you’re so utterly satisfied that you’re not going to leave the couch under any circumstances. There’s no motivation to do anything at all. You just lie there, petting your full belly, completely content and completely stagnant. That vinyl record that was stuck on “I want to be happy” finally stops—and the silence is deadening.

The Mom Test and My Tension Lesson

The Mom Test and My Tension Lesson

Today I practiced applying the Mom Test principles to my project and realized I was violating every single one. The Mom Test is called that because your mom is the person most likely to lie to you about your ideas—out of love, she’ll tell you your business concept is brilliant even when it’s terrible. The method teaches you how to validate ideas through conversation in ways that even your supportive mom can’t sugarcoat—asking about specific past behaviors and problems rather than hypothetical questions like “would you use this?”

I was asking the wrong questions, seeking validation rather than truth. I wanted the comforting lie, not the uncomfortable reality. This realization created powerful tension that drove me to practice more intensely. The discomfort of seeing my mistakes became fuel for growth. When I finally got honest answers instead of polite encouragement, the gap between what I thought I knew and what was actually true became productive tension.

What I learned: Don’t shame or blame tension—worship it. Learn to love it. It’s common to try eliminating tension, but we need to understand it has good intentions and incredible power. In what we blame often lies the key, hiding in the least obvious place.

Everything Is Strategy: Tension in Daily Life

Here’s the truth: everything is strategy, whether we’re conscious of it or not. Your relationship “style”? Strategic. Your tendency to leave dishes in the sink until there’s a teetering monument to procrastination? Also strategic.

Consider relationships: The couples therapist who tells partners to sleep in separate bedrooms for two weeks isn’t cruel—they’re engineering productive tension. The distance creates a gap between what is and what could be. That gap generates energy.

I’ve applied this myself. During my current illness, I discovered that “being sick” created a productive perspective switch. When I’m sick, I have permission to act differently. I have a different persona in my back pocket. That tension between normal-me and sick-me created surprising output—I communicated more honestly, more directly. The tension was the gift.

The most effective strategy doesn’t resolve tension—it harnesses it. Like a master archer, it draws the bow to precisely the right tension: enough to propel the arrow forward, not so much that the string snaps.

A Tool For Engineered Tension: The Patient Editor Prompt

Humans are, at our core, storytelling and breathing beings. Those are our two main characteristics. And what makes a story worth reading? Tension—the page-turner quality that keeps us engaged.

The same principle applies to your writing. Without the right tension, your words lie flat on the page. With it, they breathe and pulse.

Here’s a prompt that helped me transform my scattered thoughts into what you just read—by creating productive tension between my draft and focused feedback:

You are my *patient editor*. I have written the entire draft below.
**Your job (in order):**
1. **One-sentence summary** of what you think I'm trying to say.
2. **Strengths** – the 3–5 elements that are already working.
3. **Contradictions / obvious errors** – bullet list, citing paragraph numbers.
4. **Clarity gaps & reader questions** – where a first-time reader will stumble.
5. **Opportunities to tighten** – sentences, sections, or stories I can shorten.
6. **Big-idea amplifiers** – one suggestion each for story, statistic, or metaphor that would sharpen the message.
7. **Productive tension opportunities** – identify places where introducing contrasts, paradoxes, or opposing forces would create more engaging and dynamic content.
8. **Questions for me** – no more than five, each designed to unlock a better revision.
**Constraints** • *Do not rewrite the piece.* • *Do not mimic my voice.* • Be blunt, specific, and concise.

**Draft starts below**
[paste your draft here]

I promise it works wonders—it creates exactly the right tension between support and challenge. Try it, and watch your own writing tighten like a well-strung bow, ready to launch your ideas into the world.