I'm the Cook

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For at least the first decade of my career, everything I built belonged to someone else. Usually it started with some kind of brief, passed down the chain from clients to product and account directors and any other stakeholders. The finished work then worked its way back up through approvals and sign-offs before finding a permanent home (at least until it’s inevitably re-briefed).

When I worked in agencies and larger orgs, I always wondered why there were so many cooks. Especially with work that felt pretty formulaic or even mundane.

The last few years of working alone have made the answers pretty clear though. Even when the work seems clear cut, you don’t know what you don’t know, and what’s a clearly obvious mistake in someone else’s eyes can be a complete blindspot for me. Team members bring the value and experience from the mistakes they’ve already paid for in their past.

But I also remember the other pattern. The thing I knew was broken but wasn’t mine to fix. In a big company you learn the line between what you were asked to build and what you can see needs building, and sometimes it’s better not to cross it. Make sure it becomes someone else’s problem. That may or may not be a joke, but it’s a real skill: knowing how to make the broken thing someone else’s responsibility and keep moving.

When you’re the only person building and using a system, you inherit all of it: the brief, the decisions, the work, the mistakes, with one set of eyes instead of six. Some of that is freeing; the purpose gets clearer. But the rest is a real cost.

The layers I used to call overhead turn out to be how a bigger room stays on top of it all. There’s no one to hand it to. The broken thing is mine to fix or mine to live with, every morning. I can learn to do it, or I can build something that does it for me. Sometimes both.

I’m not saying I’m the client. But I’m the only one here, time is finite, and things need to get done, so I’m just building stuff. The brief comes from my own day: what keeps slowing me down? Which decision is taking too much time? What work am I repeating because I never fixed the underlying problem? The goal is simple: make decisions easier, get time back, make the work actually work.

Even when I’m the one coming up with everything, it’s been surprisingly hard to keep up. I’m making most of it up as I go. So far, it’s working. Until the next thing breaks.

J Lee

I'm the Cook