018 — Building Spiral Staircases

During my run this morning I was thinking about all the different projects I have up in the air, and how some of those can help to provide a foundation, or utility, to the other projects that I am working on, but at the same time can feel like a waste of time to work on in the moment. Then, out of no where, I started to think about the construction of a spiral staircase.

At the start of the project, you have the choice to either build up, or build down. Building up seems like a world of endless possibilities and freedom—very positive. Or, you can build down, trying to tackle some of the hairier issues people face in the world, simplifying the overly complicated, or unifying the scattered or incomplete information in the world. Every decision offers a choice, and every choice has a starting point.

So, back to spiral staircases, whether you decide to build up or build down, you also have the opportunity to build a very tight spiral staircase that does its job, getting you to the next level or two in a nice confined space. Or, you could build out, going wide and building a staircase that takes you on a journey. A grand structure that is circling your idea, while not confining it. The wider the structure, the more materials and time it’s going to take to build, and the longer it will take you to complete the initial spiral. Each type, either tight or wide, provide their own set of pros and cons.

The tighter the staircase, the quicker it is to build, and the faster you can circle around the idea and get to where you want to go. You can go up several flights, with multiple rotations around the center post for each one, to ascend to each floor. It’s an efficient structure, but once you get past the first couple of floors, and then decide you might need to broaden your scope, or the size of the staircase, your initial structure won’t be able to support going very wide without some additional supports being put in place to carry the load. Depending how high you went when the idea was tight, the longer span those supports are going to descend. And, depending on how wide you want to widen the scope, the more supports that will have to be put in place to help this top-heavy structure that is now spiraling out.

On the inverse, deciding to go with a very wide structure, making long, wide swooping loops as you ascend—or descend—to where you are going can be slow to build, requires a lot of material, and you may never complete a single loop. And, depending on whether you choose to tighten or wide the circle as your ideas and feedback push and pull you to new places, it can be harder to quickly tighten that circle once you have decided on the "new" direction to go. Although, unlike the tight structure that can be hard to support expansion later on, your wide idea that is circling this ever pulsing vortex can expand and contract more freely, with a structure to support it, but may never reach its clear center, and is hard to get their quickly.

Along the way, regardless of whether you are going wide or keeping it tight, you have the option to build platforms or landings along the way, that can fork off from that core idea. These can add structure and stability to the initial idea, but also offer a starting point for a structure or journey of their own. Depending on your staircase, the placement of these landings have a different affect as you are walking up the stairs. A very tight staircase could probably only support one–maybe two–along your path to the first floor. But, too many on a very tight structure would no longer be a real staircase. Where, if you were building a very wide staircase, you could potentially have several platforms or landings forking off along your progression of a single rotation. When I think about these landings I equate these to being the side stuff that you build along the way to support your efforts, both now and into the future (ie. packages, services, tools, etc.). They su

Episode Transcript

Ryan (00:00):
Hey. How's it going? I'm Ryan Hefner, and this is the All
Play podcast. So this morningduring my run, I kinda had this
vision while I was, you know,wrestling with all the different
things that are bouncing aroundin my head and wondering whether
or not I'm wasting time oncertain things or just, you
know, resisting or theresistance is preventing me or

(00:23):
so by pulling me away from doingthe hard things that I just need
to do to get done. And forwhatever reason, I started
thinking about like the, aspiral staircase.
And I don't even know why thisvision even popped in my head,
but it started, like I startedthinking about it and it's kind
of interesting. You had thislike decision at some point,

(00:45):
like initially you can eitherbuild a spiral staircase that
goes upward or downward. And Istarted thinking about that and
it's like, well, obviouslybuilding up is great, but then
you have to build support and,and foundations and stuff. Or
building down, you gotta digthrough the dirt and maybe you'd
run this some rocks or someroots or who knows water lines,

(01:05):
electrical lines, you know, whoknows what you're gonna dig up,
building downward. But then Istarted thinking also about all
the different ways that youcould construct that spiral
staircase.
You could actually have, like,one of those really tight ones
where it's just literally like aspiral staircase. It's, like,
wrapped around, you know, acenter pole or something, and

(01:27):
it's super tight. And you couldfit that in the corner
someplace, and it's it's niceand neat. And or you could
build, like, this grand wraparound, or I'm thinking, like,
you know, like the Guggenheim orsomething like that, where you
have this kind of slow, widespiraling stuff going on. And
then it started to make me thinkabout that's such a big decision

(01:51):
there too, because the width,you know, the the the the
wideness, the the breadth thatyou kind of, like, allow that
staircase to be as you build it,definitely upward is is more
restrictive than the mess maybedownward.
But I guess also if you're goingreally wide and you're you're

(02:12):
digging really hard, it's that'sa much harder staircase to build
than one that's just, like,confined to, you know, like a 6
foot or 8 foot radius. The thethe width or the the the span of
how wide that that spiralstaircase is, it just means

(02:33):
something. And I I guess thereason I'm thinking about the
spiral staircase is it's kindalike circling around ideas. You
know? You could have, like, onereally tight idea, and you could
build that really tightstaircase that just goes up that
pole.
And each stair advances as itdoes. And actually, if you even
think about a wide staircase,for every stair that you end up

(02:54):
building, you're actually notgetting that much height because
you're so wide. So you're kindof just like slowly your ascent
is probably gonna be a littlebit slower. Actually, you're
probably still going up the sameheight, but just the the pace of
of of you actually getting uphigher is gonna feel a little
bit different. But, yeah,imagine you have this the tight

(03:16):
pole, which is the stairs goingaround it.
You can go up there really fast,and you can keep your ideas
really tight. But then maybe youget to a certain height, and you
want to expand those ideas. Butyet, the structure that you
started out with can't reallysupport, like, going out wider.
And similarly, if you go reallywide to get that thing to

(03:40):
tighten up at a certain point,it's gonna take a lot more
spirals to go before you cankind of like get it to cone up
or something. And I don't know.
I just it's just interesting tothink about, you know, either
trying to, like, restrictyourself to be have a really
tight scope or a a tight visionfor something and how that could

(04:02):
be maybe good for the initialversion of whatever you're
building, but it might notsupport where it might end up
wanting to take itself or whereyou wanna take it. And then
inversely, you know, you couldbe spiraling around for a long
time and end up nowhere. So,yeah. It's just, I don't know. I

(04:24):
don't know why I had thisvision.
And then also I started thinkingabout, you know, so you have a
spiral staircase. Well, youdon't just want to have a spiral
skater staircase to nowhere. Youwant this thing to lead you
somewhere. And along that thatstair those stairs, you can
actually build, you know,landings or, you know, branch
out and have, rooms and stuff.So I started thinking about, you

(04:46):
know, every little landing thatyou build.
So for this, I'm probably gonnabe publishing, like, an NPM
package today. That's justsomething that that I've, that
I've been using in all myprojects, and I'm finally gonna
just write it so I can use itfor everything a lot easier.

(05:06):
But, and I'll I'll tell you whatit is once it's actually out
there. I'll have an episode onit. But I guess as you're kind
of spiraling and building thisstuff, you can build platforms.
I think you could build theselittle forks of things, and then
that platform then becomes anopportunity for that thing to
either go to its own room orspan off to other things. I

(05:29):
don't know. I don't know whythis concept of the spiral
staircase and the width or thetightness of it, really got my
head going this morning, but,yeah, it's just interesting to
think about where we wanna gowith stuff. Do we wanna keep our
visions really wide and airy,but not maybe not, like, move as

(05:51):
fast or really tight, but thenend up in kind of a constricted
or, you know, I was alsothinking, like, if you start
with that really tight spiralstaircase and you build it up
really high, then you wannabranch it out, you're gonna end
up with this, like, Seuss doctorSeuss like structure. You know,
you got this thing that's kinda,like, loose and high and bending

(06:14):
over, and just end up in a Seussworld.
But, yeah, I don't know. Spiralstaircases. It's got my head
thinking about some stuff. I'llget into that on another thing,
but I just wanted to drop thatlittle note to see if this
resonates with anyone. And,yeah, I mean, let me know what

(06:37):
kind of staircase you'rebuilding, and I'll do the same.
Alright. Have a great one.Later.