The Collaboration Tax
Inspired by Melissa Tan episode
Melissa Tan: Discord's velocity slowed with growth - not from laziness, but over-collaboration. Same trap with parenting decisions.
Melissa Tan noticed at Discord: they kept hiring amazing people, but velocity kept slowing down. Because they were collaborating too much. Every new hire adds communication overhead. "Everyone should know everything" feels collaborative but it's actually just expensive.
This is you and your partner trying to jointly make every single decision. Should we do swimming lessons? 45-minute discussion analyzing every YMCA within a 10-mile radius. Birthday party theme? Another meeting. What's for dinner? You've scheduled a conference call.
You're collaborating yourselves into paralysis. The kid just wants chicken nuggets and you're six Slack messages deep debating organic versus conventional.
What's the minimum the other person needs to know? Everything else is noise. Sometimes the best collaboration is leaving each other alone to just handle it. One person picks swimming. Done. The other person picks dinner. Finished. You're not building consensus, you're building resentment and also it's 8 PM and nobody's eaten.
