Be irritable

Your frustration is not a flaw. It’s a radar. And if you're a builder, it might just be your greatest asset.

Little things bother me.

Bad font choices. Typos. Weirdly aligned pixels. Push handles for pull doors. Pull handles for push doors. Low contrast photos. Apps that ask for notification access or a review without having delivered any value. Low quality packaging. A buggy app. Sloppy writing. A slow app. I can go on.

The fact that so many things bother me also used to bother me. But having spent enough time building my own products, I’ve come to realize something:

My irritation is my superpower.

Why?

Because these irritations are gaps.
They’re glitches in the Matrix — eye-opening, if we’re willing to take the red pill and look through them.
They’re problems — some small, some big. Some aren’t worth solving. Others are unsolvable.

But they’re problems.

And my job as an entrepreneur is to find problems and solve them.

It sounds simple in theory, but practically it’s very difficult.

Most people think that solving the problem is the hard part. And sure, that has its challenges.

But what happens if you don’t spot the problem in the first place?

If the way things are — the status quo — doesn’t strike you as problematic, then how do you ever build toward the future?

It reminds me of one of my favourite stories from David Foster Wallace’s famous speech, This is Water:

Two fish were casually swimming downstream in a river.
Eventually they come across another fish, who’s whistling and travelling upstream against the current.
As he swims by, he smiles and says: “How’s the water, boys!” and continues past them.
A few moments pass. The two fish keep swimming in silence.
Eventually, one of them looks at the other and says:
“What the hell is water?

As a creator, builder, or thinker — if you accept reality as-is, it'll become impossible to create something new.

Irritation is your way out.

If something irritates you or surprises you, it likely represents an opportunity.

An opportunity to solve. To build. To create. To publish. To invent.

This has played out so many times in my own life:

• It irritated me that I didn’t know enough about Indian history, despite those being my roots. All the existing podcasts were built for an Indian audience — none catered to Western second-generation immigrants. So I created an AI-powered podcast called The Other Side that does exactly this.

• It irritated me that I had to manually reply to 20+ emails every day from reporters just to get some press for my startup. So I built a software to do it for me.

• It irritated me that AI research was moving so fast, and my job relied on staying on top of it — but I had no system. So I built a platform to filter and curate new papers.

• And the list goes on…

My current startup, Swift only exists because an irritated sports facility owner came to us, looking for help.

Irritation is inspiration.

Don’t let it go.