The TripTik Method: Why Your Long-Term Plans Need Better Wayfinding

A case for productive meandering in careers and products

Welcome to Frank Takeaways. I'm Frank, writing the notes worth keeping from decades at companies like Slack, Etsy, and Google. I run a coaching practice dedicated to guiding leaders through the tricky stuff of building products and high-performing teams.

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My sister and I would pass them around the backseat like sacred scrolls. Those spiral-bound AAA TripTiks, with their narrow strips of highlighted highway and hand-circled rest stops. This was 1990s, and we were driving from Maryland to Disney World. No GPS. No smartphones. Just these custom-made guidebooks that showed you one thing: how to get from here to there, with just enough detail to make the journey interesting.

The binding cracked when you folded back each page. In the margins, the AAA agent had written cryptic notes in blue ballpoint: "Good BBQ here" or "Clean restrooms" or "Skip - tourist trap." Eac…