When I first moved to Brooklyn, I hit a bit of a creative slump and knew I had to get back on track. As someone who crafts digital products for a living, I craved the tactile satisfaction of making something with my own hands. That's how I found myself diving into woodworking — over the next year I engrossed myself in crafting furniture under the watchful eye of a skilled teacher. The desk I’m using now is the only piece that’s survived, but most enduring asset from that time is the lesson I learned about the value of rough cuts.

Rough cuts involve initially shaping a piece of lumber into a general form before delving into the intricate details and precise measurements. The primary goal is to remove the excess material without compromising the core parts needed for the final product. It's a balancing act of subtraction, ensuring you retain what's essential for the next steps. More than just making an initial cut, it's about strategically discarding the unnecessary to uncover the potential of what's left. This woodworking principle, though simple, offers a powerful mental model for navigating the complexities of ambiguous problem solving.

Consider the task of assessing a new product's viability. The conventional route might involve deep data analysis and intricate models to forecast revenue accurately from the start. However, applying the rough cut principle simplifies this process. Instead of striving for immediate perfection, we start by asking a fundamental question: what's the minimum revenue that would make this venture worthwhile? This question greatly reduces the complexity of the challenge, shifting the focus from precise forecasting to a more manageable goal of assessing what needs to be true for the product to potentially meet that minimum revenue threshold.

I also find this technique to be useful in prioritizing product development, especially during early work to achieve product-market fit. One angle that I’ve used with past clients is to identify the risk that’s most likely to kill an idea. What’s the biggest assumption that needs to be true for this to succeed? Forget all of the other ideas — take a day, or a week, to test that assumption with the smallest possible experiment (even if it’s not a capital-p Product). The email startup Superhuman took another approach to this idea^[1], using a simple survey to segment users and only considering product suggestions from their most enthusiastic customers. This enabled them to drastically cut down the feature request noise and focus on building true advocates.

Rough cuts are powerful tools beyond the realm of product and business. When writing, starting with a "rough cut" can involve writing a broad, unrefined first draft without worrying about the perfection of language or structure. The focus is on getting the ideas down — on shaping the raw lumber. Once you have the larger idea down on paper, it’s much easier to revise and refine in subsequent edits to remove unnecessary parts and strengthen the core message. This is one of the things I’ve found most useful about generative AI tools — they get you to your first draft much more quickly, and enable you to focus your creative energy on refining the idea.

Looking back, learning about rough cuts in Brooklyn wasn't just about woodworking; it turned into a key strategy I use across all my work. This simple idea taught me the value of starting with the core and cutting out the noise, whether I'm building a product or drafting an article. It's about making those first broad strokes, then refining as you go.