One of the most important shifts in how I think about decision making happened when I realized that most people make choices under the wrong set of constraints. They accept the current reality as fixed and optimize within it. This is a trap. I like to call this "Constraint-Driven Development".
The antidote is what I call "Toddler Mindset". I realized this after observing my own daughter. Toddlers don't see constraints the way adults do. To them, every surface is climbable, every object is a toy, and every problem is solvable with enough persistence (or crying). They don't ask, 'What's allowed?' They ask, 'What's possible?' This pure, unfiltered curiosity drives their decision-making—they pursue the outcome they want without being burdened by the rules that adults tend to impose on themselves.
My daughter doesn’t know she’s in the wrong lane. She just saw the fastest path to her destination and took it. No mental constraints holding her back. She knew her end goal and was determined to get there.
It's a simple idea with profound implications: when faced with a decision, don't start by asking what can be done within the current constraints. Start by asking what the best possible outcome would be if there were no constraints. Then work backwards to see which constraints are truly immovable and which ones are just assumptions masquerading as facts. The best leaders don't just remove blockers for their teams, they question it's very existence. They empower their teams to reshape the system when the ideal solution demands it. I believe that this behavior in your leadership is a simple litmus test to know if you are working in the right organization.
While we're on the topic, let's call a spade a spade — most constraints are not set in stone and often defined by a group of random people in a room to, at times, suit their own agendas. Hence, I want you to repeat after me: MOST CONSTRAINTS ARE NOT REAL. They are artifacts of history, inertia, or lack of imagination. In engineering organizations, this is especially common. An engineer proposes a better way of building something, and the response is, "We can't do that because we use this tool, or we have this process, or this team owns that." The implicit assumption is that these constraints are permanent. But often they're not. Tools can be changed. Processes can be reworked. Teams can be reorganized.
When you design the ideal solution first, you see the constraints for what they are. You see that what seemed like an unchangeable landscape is actually a series of levers you can pull. Changing constraints takes work and it won't always be easy. It requires convincing stakeholders, building trust, and sometimes risking failure. But the alternative is worse: optimizing for a local maximum, trapped in a suboptimal state because no one questioned the rules of the game.
What's funny is that, more often than you realize, you will be the constraint that prevents a system from reaching its globally optimal state. In fact, I'm confident this has probably happened to you a few times in the past year. Remember that time you avoided involving another team because you thought it would slow things down, only to later realize their input could have saved you weeks of work? Or when you found yourself in a turf war with another team, spending more energy on protecting ownership than solving the problem? Maybe you kept working on a project you knew was doomed because you didn't want to risk upsetting stakeholders. Or you hesitated to push for a cross-functional initiative because you feared stepping on another team's toes, worrying it would spark political friction or damage your working relationships. We all do it. We let our own discomfort, fears, or desire for recognition limit what's possible. And those personal constraints can be the hardest to recognize and challenge.
Recognizing these constraints, especially the ones we place on ourselves is hard because they often disguise themselves as common sense. We tell ourselves, "That's just how things work here," or "I don't want to rock the boat." It takes deliberate effort to pause and ask, "Is this a real limitation, or just a story I've accepted?" The best engineers, and the best founders, operate this way. They see systems as malleable. They understand that the current state of things is not the limit of what's possible. They start from an ideal and negotiate reality into alignment.
Things are rarely as fixed as they appear. A blob of clay becomes a masterpiece in the right hands. Some constraints can be just as malleable if we want to change them. However, it needs to be for the right reasons.
The key is to catch yourself in those moments and switch back to Toddler Mindset. What would this situation look like if there were no constraints? Once you start practicing this at work, you begin to see how it applies everywhere. People constrain their lives in the same way. We make some of our biggest life decisions based on temporary constraints—where we work, the pressure we feel in our careers, or how you are not getting along with your current boss. Imagine deciding not to move closer to family because your job is in a different city, only to realize years later that the job was temporary but the distance cost you precious time with loved ones. Or staying in a high-stress role for fear of losing momentum in your career, only to burn out and lose more time recovering. Or not having kids, not because you didn't want to, but because it felt impossible alongside your current workload. Jobs change. Stress ebbs and flows. But those life decisions can ripple across decades. These constraints often feel permanent but are almost always short-lived. Yet the decisions we make under their influence can shape the next 10, 20, or 30 years of our lives.
I'm starting to see this more clearly after becoming a parent. When you become a parent, you essentially sign up for job that lasts a life time. Some make the mistake of thinking you are on the hook for only the first 18 years but the reality couldn't be further away. Your kids are going to have their own kids and you will uproot your life for months at a stretch to help take care of your grandkids. This sounds oddly specific because....it is.
Both the grandmas have been the MVPs of our lives. If they were wrestlers, they’d be Matt and Jeff Hardy—Tag Team Champions of the World.
Seeing life through this longer lens has started to shift my thinking. It's made me question the constraints I had been accepting as fixed and start thinking more intentionally about what I actually want in the long run. I'm now convinced that the best lives are designed backwards by asking what your ideal life looks like and bending the universe around you to make that happen. This automatically makes you more ambitious and allows you to see beyond the immediate hurdles. It encourages you to have honest conversations with your partner about what you both truly want because you are no longer optimizing for the next year, but for the next few decades of your life.
"Toddler Mindset" is not about being delusional or ignoring reality. It's about realizing that reality is more flexible than it might appear. You can negotiate with it. And often, it will yield. The next time you catch yourself saying, "That's just how it is," pause. Ask yourself: What would the ideal outcome look like? What if the constraints weren't there? You might be surprised by how often the universe bends, if you push it just a little.