Become a massive value provider

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---
id: cryptic-watchtower-watches
title: "Become a massive value provider"
summary: "Give people more than they came for. Build the skills to make that possible, take pride in the work, and turn useful contributions into reasons to choose you again."
version: 2
published: 2026-10-17T17:07:41.374Z
updated: 2026-10-17T20:05:44.204+00:00
language: "en"
tags: ["development"]
sources: [{"title":"Yusuf İpek — Devasa Değer Üreten Birisi Ol","url":"https://yusufipek.me/yazilar/devasa-deger"},{"title":"Macnamara, Hambrick and Oswald (2014) — Deliberate Practice and Performance: A Meta-Analysis","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24986855/"},{"title":"Ryan and Deci (2000) — Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being","url":"https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2000_RyanDeci_SDT.pdf"},{"title":"Gneezy and List (2006) — Putting Behavioral Economics to Work: Testing for Gift Exchange in Labor Markets Using Field Experiments","url":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0262.2006.00707.x"}]
---

**Do your work so well that people get more out of it than they thought to ask for.** Enough that they stop and notice. That's a standard I want to hold myself to [1].

Anyone can hand over the first thing that technically meets the request. A usable answer, a rough edit, a tool that mostly works. But there's usually another question worth asking before calling it done: what would make this seriously useful to the person receiving it?

Maybe they asked for an explanation and you give them an example that finally makes it click. Maybe they came for a video and leave with something they can actually apply. Maybe you solve a problem they expected to spend the rest of the afternoon fighting. That extra thought is where a lot of the value comes from.

## Give people more than they came for

The first version of an idea is easy to settle for. You have something in front of you, it looks fine, and you want to move on. I get it. But if I never question that first attempt, I never find out how much better the work could have been.

Take a thumbnail. You can make one, decide it looks good, and upload it. Or you can try several versions and test which one gets people to open the video. With editing, you can make the cuts and export, or think about where the pacing drags and which explanation needs a visual. With a long conversation, you can leave the useful bits buried in two hours of footage, or pull them out for someone who would never watch the whole thing.

**The extra work should make a difference to the person on the other end.** Adding things for the sake of adding things doesn't get you there. A shorter explanation can provide more value than a longer one. A small tool can save someone more time than a huge application. You have to pay attention to what actually helps.

That's the part I find interesting: noticing a useful thing you could do before someone has to spell it out for you. Once you start looking for those opportunities, the work gives you plenty of them.

## Get good enough to have something to give

There's an obvious catch. If the value is supposed to come from me, **I need something worth passing on.** What do I understand? What can I do well? Which problems can I solve that I couldn't solve six months ago?

You don't get an unlimited supply of useful ideas from the same shallow understanding. At some point you have to study, try things, get feedback, and fix what you're bad at. Otherwise you're dressing up the same limited knowledge and hoping nobody notices.

Research on deliberate practice makes a useful distinction here: practice aimed specifically at improving performance has structure and a target. A meta-analysis found its relationship with performance varied across fields [2]. That doesn't give me a magic number of hours to grind. It gives me a better question: **what exactly am I getting better at when I do this?**

If my explanations are confusing, I can work on making one difficult idea clear. If people abandon a tool during setup, I can watch where they get stuck. If an edit feels slow, I can try another cut and compare. Each attempt should teach me something I can use in the next one.

Reading matters too, but I want it connected to practice. Learn something, use it, find the gap, go back. Do that regularly and you have more to offer than you did before.

## It feels better to do the job properly

There's a payoff before anyone pays you. You know whether you gave the work some actual thought or rushed out something half-assed. Getting better at something you chose to do is satisfying in its own right.

Self-determination theory treats competence and autonomy, alongside relatedness, as basic psychological needs. Its research connects conditions that support those needs with motivation and well-being [3]. My takeaway is practical: choosing a worthwhile challenge and getting capable enough to handle it can be part of what keeps the work enjoyable.

I want that from what I do. I want to look at the result and know there's something there. Praise is nice, but I don't want it to be the only reason I bother doing good work.

## Make yourself worth coming back to

When someone gets a lot out of your work, you've given them a reason to remember you. They might share it, recommend you, come back for the next thing, or decide you're the person they want to pay. **Being unusually useful gives people a reason to choose you again.**

Reciprocity research offers some support for the underlying idea that people respond to receiving more than expected. In field experiments, unexpectedly higher pay initially led workers to put in more effort, though the difference faded after the first few hours [4]. That's a specific setting, not proof that every helpful act produces a return. Still, it shows that the extra benefit someone receives can change how they respond.

For me, the sensible move is to keep producing work people have a reason to value, make it available, and get better at doing it. If I want more independence in how I earn a living, having a skill people actively seek out is something worth building toward. I'll also need a way for them to find and pay me; being useful alone doesn't arrange that.

**Become someone who can provide a ridiculous amount of value.** Learn enough to have something substantial to offer, care enough to make it useful, and keep raising the standard of what you put out. I'd rather spend my time becoming that person than keep finding excuses for work I already know could be better.

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