I’m currently staring at a Slack thread that has swollen to 17 responses in the last 47 minutes, and my jaw is throbbing with a dull, rhythmic ache because I bit the side of my tongue while eating a sandwich at my desk. It’s that sharp, metallic zing of self-inflicted pain that makes you want to blame the bread for being too crusty, even though you’re the one who chewed too fast. We are in the middle of a project ‘kickoff’-a term used loosely here-and the first 107 minutes have been spent arguing over where the shared drive actually lives. Not what’s in it, mind you, but where it is. One person says it’s in the cloud, another says it’s on the local server that hasn’t been dusted since 2007, and the project lead just keeps saying, ‘You guys are smart, just figure it out.’

My name is Avery L.-A., and my job is to stop people from taking things that don’t belong to them. Usually, that means looking at CCTV footage of someone stuffing 17 sticks of expensive deodorant down their cargo pants, but more often, it means identifying the systemic holes that allowed them to do it. In the retail world, we call it ‘shrink.’ In the corporate world, we should call it ‘cognitive shrink.’ It’s the loss of time, energy, and sanity that occurs when you force people to reinvent the wheel every single Tuesday because nobody bothered to write down how the wheel is supposed to turn.

Cognitive Shrink and the Vacuum of Debt

I remember a specific case at a mid-sized department store where they had lost $7777 in high-end electronics over a single weekend. The manager was furious, screaming about ‘untrustworthy staff.’ When I looked into it, the problem wasn’t a criminal mastermind. The problem was that the ‘Just Figure It Out’ mandate had extended to the security protocols. The new hires were told to ‘just figure out’ the locking mechanism on the display cases. It was a finicky, double-tumbler system. Instead of being trained for 7 minutes on how to properly engage the deadbolt, they just pushed it until it clicked. It didn’t actually lock. The customers figured that out before the staff did.

– The Debt of JFIO

That is the debt of JFIO-it creates a vacuum that is always filled by something worse than what you intended.

The Frontier Mentality vs. Settled Territory

We love the hero, don’t we? We love the person who stays until 7:07 PM because they finally tracked down the login for the marketing portal that was lost three managers ago. We give them ‘Employee of the Month’ awards. But if your organization requires a hero to perform a basic administrative task, your organization is broken. You are operating on a frontier mindset in a settled territory. In the frontier, you have to figure out how to dig a well because there are no pipes. In a settled city, if you’re digging a well in your backyard every time you want a glass of water, you’re not a pioneer-you’re just inefficient.

This refusal to create settled infrastructure-defined processes, accessible documentation, clear hierarchies of approval-is often framed as being ‘agile.’ Companies claim they don’t want to be bogged down by bureaucracy. But there is a massive difference between a 127-page manual on how to use a stapler and a 1-page document explaining how to request a software license.

Friction, Flexibility, and Failure Rate

I see this in my own work constantly. People think theft prevention is about catching the bad guy. It’s not. It’s about making it so easy to do the right thing that the wrong thing becomes a glaring anomaly. When I consult for stores, I look at the friction. If a clerk has to ‘figure out’ how to tag a returned item because the system is confusing, they just won’t do it. They’ll set it aside. It’ll get lost. It’ll get stolen.

77% of process failures I investigate are the result of someone trying to be ‘flexible’ instead of being clear. The same logic applies to specialized equipment or high-stakes home improvements. Imagine buying a sophisticated climate control system and being told to ‘just figure it out’ when it comes to the complex wiring or the optimal airflow patterns.

You might get it to turn on, but you’ll likely spend 7 weeks wondering why your bedroom is 47 degrees while the kitchen is a sauna. This is where the value of a guide becomes apparent. Whether it’s security or HVAC, having someone who has already solved the problem is a shortcut past the ‘learning debt.’ For instance, when people are looking for specific technical solutions without the headache of trial and error, they often find that working with specialists like minisplitsforless provides that missing layer of settled infrastructure. They give you the answer so you don’t have to spend your Saturday morning in a YouTube rabbit hole wondering if you’re about to blow a fuse.

My brain has a limited amount of ‘figuring it out’ juice every day. If I spend it all on the basics-the digital equivalent of finding my car keys-I have nothing left for the actual work I was hired to do. I’m a theft prevention specialist. I should be analyzing patterns of organized retail crime, not wondering why our project management tool requires a 7-step authentication process that only works on Thursdays.

The Arrogance of Unnecessary Effort

Organizations do this on a massive scale. They treat their employees’ time as a sunk cost. Since they’re already paying for those 40 hours a week, it doesn’t ‘cost’ anything to have them wander around the digital wilderness looking for a template. But it does cost. It costs in morale. It costs in the ‘quiet quitting’ that happens when a smart person realizes they are being used as a human search engine for a disorganized boss. It costs in the 17% of employees who leave within the first year because they’re tired of the chaos.

Building the Runway, Not Praising the Fire

We need to stop praising the ‘Just Figure It Out’ mentality as a virtue. It is a temporary workaround that has been allowed to become a permanent state of being. We need to start valuing the ‘Boring People’ who write the documentation, who set up the file structures, and who create the boring, repeatable processes that allow the rest of us to actually do our jobs. These people aren’t ‘killing the vibe’ or ‘slowing us down.’ They are building the runway.

As my tongue finally stops throbbing-though I suspect I’ll be reminded of my sandwich-related hubris for at least 7 more hours-I look back at that Slack thread. Someone eventually found the link. It was pinned in a channel that hasn’t been used since July 2017. We ‘figured it out,’ but at what cost? We lost the momentum we had at the start of the meeting. We lost the collective focus. We traded our ‘extraordinary’ potential for a mediocre victory over a broken filing system.

Next time someone tells you to ‘just figure it out,’ ask yourself if the problem you’re solving is actually a puzzle worth your intellect, or if you’re just being asked to pay someone else’s organizational debt. Because the interest rate on that debt is 100%, and it’s due every single day you show up to work.

I’d rather be the person who builds the lock than the person who has to figure out why it’s broken while it’s already being picked.