Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

What is Column B thinking?

4 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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Short transcript excerpt from a talk discussing two planning approaches: (1) envisioning an idealized, long-term ‘perfect future’ (building a castle on the hill) and (2) working pragmatically with current resources (stacking available bricks). The speaker frames “Column B thinking” as choosing the vision-driven approach to guide multi-year investment.

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There's two ways of planning you can dream of. Like, what is the perfect vision of the future? What. What future do you want to exist in? What would you like the world to look like? Just imagine you. You're building a castle on the hill, and you're like, what would be the most magical, wonderful, mythical experience? And the other thing you can do is you can look at the bricks around you and you can say, what can I do with these bricks? I think most planning is often done by looking at the bricks and trying to stack them. And then you can create only so much. And so I guess the column B thinking is thinking about what is that magical, wonderful future that you then want to invest years and decades of your life actually building?