What's a Steel Thread?

If you ever tackle creative projects, then you're probably like me (and everyone I've ever worked with): sometimes you get stuck. You procrastinate, you can't get traction, you stall on a project halfway through.

One of my favorite techniques from making things faster and getting better results without getting stuck quite as much is the steel thread approach.

I first learned about this approach years ago as a software engineer and product manager in the tech industry. Since then, steel threads have helped me and my clients engage with creative work: novels, blog posts, workshops, product development for startups, building a business, even junk journaling. Steel threads help with all kinds of creative work. In future videos, we'll break down the steel thread approach, why it's useful, how to make a steel thread, specific tools and tips.

But for now, let's answer the most obvious question...

What the heck is a steel thread?

An individual steel thread is the tiniest possible end-to-end version of the entire project that you want to make.

• It's a thread because it weaves end-to-end across the span of your project.
• It's steel because it's strong enough to be the foundation for later improvements.

As an engineer and product manager, I used steel threads as an iterative approach to help my teams tackle new and challenging projects where we needed to get traction quickly, but we didn't know enough to be able to plan out the whole project.

And frankly, that's the situation for most creative work. You have an idea of what you want to build, but you're charting your own course as you go. Steel threads help us navigate the complexity and uncertainty of creating something new.

Let's look at some other approaches so we can see where the steel thread approach really shines.

Fat Marker Prototype vs. MVPs

At the beginning of a software project, I would often do what's called a fat marker prototype.

The idea here is to sketch out a very high level design of the thing that you want to make. You use a nice fat marker so that you can't get lost in the details. You have to just draw the broad strokes.

A fat marker prototype is at the low end of the complexity scale. It's a great way to think through a project in the early stages. But by itself, it doesn't really tell you how to make the thing.

Now, even outside of the tech industry, a lot of people have heard of the MVP, or minimum viable product. The idea with an MVP is to figure out the minimum version of your project that will actually succeed in the world – that will be "viable" – and then build that smallest version to start.

I'm a huge fan of the MVP concept. In fact, I use the MVP constantly in combination with steel threads. But on its own, the minimum viable product concept has some traps.

I want to look at a few things that often trip us up. They're all hiding in this little word viable.

MVP Trap 1: "Viable" is an unknown

The first trap is that at the beginning of a new project, we're just guessing at what viable is. We don't actually know which features are users going to find essential. How many drafts of that novel do we need to write? What version of our video is going to land with viewers? On day one, we're guessing.

MVP Trap 2: "Viable" tricks us out of "minimum"

Second, when we're aiming at viable, something that's "good enough" to launch, something that's "good enough" to sell or publish, it's very easy to trick ourselves out of doing the minimum.

That's just good ol' fear.

I see it in myself and in my clients every single day. We're afraid it's not good enough. We are afraid it's going to fail... so we often end up doing more than we need to do.

MVP Trap 3: "Viable" can be different than we expected

Of course, other times viable is actually bigger (or different) than we thought, and we don't discover that until deep into the project.

If we'd known earlier, we might have made different decisions.

Steel Threads Help with the Messy Middle

So the fat marker prototype is a great way to get started, and the MVP helps us think about when we're finished... But how do we do all the messy work in the middle?

Enter the steel thread.

It has more complexity than a fat marker prototype. With a steel thread, you're building something real, and you're touching all the major steps of the project.

But steel threads have less complexity than an MVP. Each steel thread is a tiny iteration that doesn't need to be viable. It doesn't need to succeed. It just needs to teach you what you need to learn so you can make the next deal thread.

Steel Thread Examples

We will get into detailed examples in future posts, but I don't want this to stay abstract. So let's touch on a some concrete examples.

Let's say you're creating a new workshop. You could jot down the main points that you want to cover, create some very basic slides, and walk through that with a friend. That could be a steel thread.

Or maybe you're writing a book. Let's say a novel, like I'm doing. You could work out the rough storyline and write a one-page narrative outline that tells the story in a single page. That could be a steel thread for a novel.

Maybe you're tackling a new workout routine... and it's daunting. You could start by just doing one of each exercise; that could be a steel thread for a new workout.

The YouTube video for this post is a great example of this approach in action. I made several steel threads in the process of making that video.

For the first steel thread, I made:

• an early version of the slides
• a very rough talk track
• three takes of the video itself

I edited the take that I hated the least, uploaded it to YouTube as a private video and...

It was very rough. 😬

I shared that painfully rough first video with four people. Which was not easy, because I knew it wasn't great.

But getting early feedback meant I could go back and make much smarter improvements.

A Steel Thread Exercise

Great. We've explored – at a very high level – what steel threads are. In the next two posts, we'll get into why you might use this approach, and then how to make your first steel thread.

But before we wrap up, here's an exercise.

Think about a project that you are working on or something you've been wanting to tackle. Your assignment is to answer:

Write down a list of four or five essential steps. In the next post we'll talk about why steel threads are so effective, and then you can refer back to your notes when we get to the post on how to make your own steel thread.

Remember: your creative vision matters. Let's bring it to life!