The Modern Pioneer's Guide to Personal Frontiers

Frontiers call to the pioneer’s spirit. Traditionally, the frontiers existed between settled and unsettled land. A place that formed on the furthest extent of what was known. Over 200 years ago, pioneers set out to chart new lands and discover more about the world we live in.

For most of history, the world has been a collective frontier. We looked to the stars to navigate the world in front of us. Back then, you would have found yourself sailing across the sea to an unknown world, heading west in search of gold, or participating in a new form of government.

Pioneers are opportunistic explorers looking for the answer in the unknown.

In the process of conquering each new unknown the frontier gradually shifts forward. Today, the modern frontier looks very different from what it used to be.

The new frontier is personal

We no longer look up to the stars to get to where we need to go. Instead we look down, with satellites orbiting in space, to tell us the specific directions from point A to B. There’s no spot on this Earth that hasn’t been uncovered. The collective frontier is gone.

The modern frontier is individualistic.

Frontiers aren’t about where we are going to settle anymore. They’re knowledge based. It’s the space between what we know and what has yet to be discovered. This can be as small as having a new experience or as big as taking humans to Mars. But today each frontier is a personal one.

Everyone’s zone of operation is different. You are pursuing a path that might be fundamentally different from mine, but we’re both trying to find and operate on our own individual frontiers.

Forge your own path to the unknown

Most people try to adapt the playbooks of others or follow what the mainstream, their parents, or their boss gives them.

That fails to work in the long-run. No one has a step by step playbook for you to operate on your personal frontier. The playbook might get you through the beginning phases but inevitably you will reach a point where you’ve entered the unknown.

All of your role models conquered the frontier on their own.

When Steve Jobs started Apple, there wasn’t ever a trillion dollar tech company. When Elon Musk started SpaceX, no one knew how to land rockets. When Jeff Bezos started Amazon, ecommerce wasn’t even a category. You have to become comfortable with this ambiguity.

Only your own decision making can get you through the unknown.

Investor Nico Wittenborn suggests gaining confidence in your unique perspective and what it enables you to do.¹ He calls this the adjacent possible. Founders who explore the adjacent possible put themselves in a space where not everyone is crowding. They are driven by curiosity to figure out what’s happening in that space

The only way to be at the forefront of a theme or idea is to develop those ideas by being in it.

The space that’s still being developed, and you're able to contribute in a meaningful way, is your personal frontier. Finding it will create extreme upside. It will allow you to become a leverage expert through the natural adoption cycles.

To find your true frontier you must see something others don’t yet see.

This is what opens you up to build something truly unique. Look at the uncertainty around it as the potential source of opportunity.

The expanding frontier of knowledge

“If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulder of giants,” said Isaac Newton, who began inventing calculus at just 23. In those days, a brilliant mind could reach the frontier of knowledge in their twenties.

But, like I said, the frontier continues to shift forward. Economist Benjamin Jones calls this the burden of knowledge. The more we learn, the farther the frontier stretches.

Today, it takes nearly four decades to be prepared to make a contribution to the frontier. The peak age for groundbreaking discoveries has risen from 30 in 1900 to nearly 40 by 2000.² While our education improves, the journey length to find your adjacent possible expands.

Embrace failure to find your frontier

As time continues, the world will continue to grow and evolve with complexity at every corner.

There is too much for any one person to know everything about anything. Inefficiencies and failures exist everywhere in the world. Failure streams are the quickest way to step into the frontier.

You build your understanding of monstrous arrangements by looking at where things fail.

Failure exposes the interesting nuances. It comes from complexity, entropy, and deviations. If things didn’t fail we’d turn everything into a diagram and just memorize those.

The part with the problems is important. Most people tackle problems they understand how to solve. Not impactful problems. 

Keith Rabois learned a critical lesson from Peter Thiel, while at PayPal. Solve A+ problems, not B+ problems just because they’re easier.³ 

A+ problems are signals that you’re entering your personal frontier. You hardly ever have a first right answer to A+ problems. It feels so unnatural to chase these problems down. A lot of time and energy will go into solving them.

These A+ problems could be solving a platform issue with your company's product or trying to tackle the world’s hardest problems. Both expose you to the micro and macro of your personal frontier.

Develop your own vision of the future

Your success on the frontier hinges on one thing: your vision.

A vision is not something someone else can grant to you. That’s why there’s no step by step to win on the frontier. Vision only comes from developing new concepts for how things work. 

Steve Jobs began developing a new concept for the personal computer around the turn of the century. The computer would be a hub for all your digital activity. A place to play your videos or store your photos, read your books and magazines, or listen to your music. The computer, rather than being on the sidelines, would coordinate all your devices. Linked and synced to this new digital hub.

This vision came from a concept he developed around “digital lifestyle” where a computer managed all aspects of it.⁴ This vision led to the development of the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iCloud. All bringing this concept to life. This concept took Apple from being a high-end niche computer company to the most valuable consumer tech company in the world.

Your success hinges on your ability to develop novel concepts for how the world will work in the future. It’s the metaphorical stars to look up to that will help you navigate the unknown. Something to anchor the potential future in the current known.

If you can develop a new concept, you can develop a vibrant vision that will let you step into your personal frontier.