My Top 5 Blind Spots
I'd heard about ChatGPT releasing better memory and the ability to query past chats. I didn't think much of it at the time. Maybe this would be useful for looking up things I'd asked in the past and following up on them. But it was pretty vague, and I didn't have any deep thoughts on the matter.
Then I spotted a tweet. Someone asked ChatGPT to uncover what his top blind spots were. I thought, "Hey, let me try that!" I've had hundreds of conversations with ChatGPT over the past couple years, so there's probably something there.
I was completely floored by GPT's response. It was 100% on point. Many things I'd kind of felt on and off over the years but never quite articulated were right there in front of me - and ranked too!
I want to share them below and start a journey to improve each of the five points it highlighted. These are massive. If I can get better at these five things, I'll become so much more effective.
At the end of the day, there are certain things I'm good at and certain things I'm bad at. To become more well-rounded, you want to address the things you're absolutely bad at. Even if you just reach a competent level, that's enough of a boost to make you 10x more likely to succeed.
That's really what this post boils down to: uncovering all five blind spots, sharing my opinions on them, and later coming up with a plan to address each one.
The Blind Spots
1. Emotional Avoidance of Marketing & Promotion
Symptoms:
- You delay or procrastinate marketing tasks, especially copywriting or social posting.
- You've explicitly said you have an emotional aversion to marketing and feel uneasy due to perceived expectations.
Blind Spot: You know marketing is crucial—but you undervalue its importance relative to product building. You treat it like a side task, even though it's the core engine of user growth.
Impact: You ship great products that barely see daylight. You're relying too much on organic reach or delayed launches, leading to lost momentum and weak customer traction.
Fix: Systematize it like you would engineering—timebox, templatize, and delegate. Or partner with someone who lives for attention.
2. Overengineering Early Ideas
Symptoms:
- You've said you tend to overthink projects and build too much before testing market demand.
- You want the perfect positioning, brand, and tech from day one.
Blind Spot: You're optimizing for scalability and polish before proving the concept is wanted. You think like a craftsman, not a scrappy experimenter.
Impact: You miss fast validation loops. Ideas take weeks or months to test that could've taken days. When they flop, it's a heavy emotional and time cost.
Fix: Adopt a "10% solution" rule: build only what's necessary to test one core user behavior. Fight the urge to polish. Be ugly and fast.
3. Delegation Without Accountability Loops
Symptoms:
- You've offloaded work but ended up cleaning up after it.
- Tools like Google Sheets and Trello didn't improve ownership.
Blind Spot: You're delegating tasks but not outcomes. You want to trust people to self-manage but haven't built a system that guarantees visibility and follow-through.
Impact: You burn time reviewing others' work. You become the fallback for quality. Morale and performance stagnate on your team.
Fix: Set up weekly outcome-based reviews: not "did you do the task?" but "did the user outcome improve?" Use a single source of truth, kill passive tools, and implement weekly reporting with sharp, non-negotiable KPIs.
4. Underleveraging Your Story
Symptoms:
- You've never consistently shared your personal journey (founder of Amal, ex-GE Six Sigma, etc.) as part of your branding.
- You're building value-driven products but rarely center yourself in the narrative.
Blind Spot: You see storytelling as indulgent or self-promotional. But your background, conviction, and faith alignment are major trust signals—especially in Muslim markets.
Impact: You're missing out on magnetizing early adopters and believers. You seem more like a tool than a movement.
Fix: Start weaving your story into everything: your landing pages, your video intros, your about page. Frame it as "why I had to build this" rather than "look at me."
5. Perfectionism Masquerading as Strategy
Symptoms:
- You spend a lot of time crafting "the right" direction, often resulting in over-analysis or stagnation.
- You're deeply reflective, and sometimes this slows execution.
Blind Spot: You frame perfectionism as thoughtfulness. But often, it's fear of being wrong. You stall instead of launching the imperfect version and iterating.
Impact: It creates decision fatigue. You never feel like you're on solid ground, even when you are. Your velocity drops.
Fix: Set "imperfect by design" constraints—e.g., "launch within 72 hours or kill it." Keep a kill-switch journal for stalled ideas. Track decisions by speed, not just by quality.