The Tyranny of Position

It takes a lot of courage to make a great leap into the unknown. But often the hardest thing to do is abandon what you already know.

In 1975, an engineer at Kodak called Steven Sasson created an internal prototype of something that could change the world. It was, verifiably, the world’s first digital camera (DSLR). But I can’t tell you what it was called, because the device never got a name. It was never commercially produced.

The gizmo was a hefty 8 pounds, captured black and white images on cassette tape, and took 23 seconds just to take a picture. But that’s not why Kodak declined to make it. It’s because they were already very successful with a different kind of camera. They needed to protect their film camera sales.

It turns out, film wasn't just Kodak's business model it was their entire framework for understanding what photography meant.

Chess players have a term for this: "positional blindness." It's when your pieces are arranged in a way that makes certain moves almost invisible to your conscious mind, even when they're objectively the best moves on the board.

A position blind chess player doesn’t avoid the best move because he’s scared. But he’s so focused on seeing the game from one angle that he can’t see any other way forward.

Your past successes can often create cognitive constraints on the future successes you can conceive.

Consider how many established companies spotted emerging trends early but failed to act effectively. Not because they were cowardly or incompetent, but because they were trapped by the logic of their existing success. Every decision gets filtered through the question "how does this serve our current business?" rather than "what does the future actually require?"

Your success teaches you lessons. Those lessons become frameworks. Those frameworks become prisons.

Success creates lessons, which become frameworks, which without substantial effort can become mental prisons. We become hammers chasing nails.

Being first to spot an opportunity means nothing if tunnel-vision prevents you from pursuing it.

How many relationships have you failed to pursue because it didn’t fit your existing life structure? How many career pivots have you missed because they contradict your current identity? How many opportunities have become invisible to you because they require abandoning positions you’ve worked so hard to establish?