One of the more frequently quoted lines from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is:
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
This idea shows up in many modern mindset adaptations and makes for some good social media posts. One I saw recently said:
“The secret to understanding the mind is that when it is weak, situations are problems. When the mind is strong, situations are opportunities.”
It’s a similar concept—what’s in your way isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it could become your next opportunity. There’s another layer to this idea that I’ve been thinking about and want to explore for a moment.
What does it really mean when someone like Ryan Holiday says, “The obstacle is the way”? It sounds good, but I always wonder: how does that practically apply to me? So I started thinking about examples from my corporate experience. The first one that popped into my mind was the origin story of a company called Slack.
If you’re not in development circles, you may not even know this tool. Think of it as instant messaging for nerds. Its success sparked a tidal wave of similar tools, each with a unique flavor and a specific target audience. Microsoft now has Teams, which has become the default communication tool in many enterprises. I often use Google Workspace Chat, another variant of the same concept. “Unified communication” was the buzzword at one point, but really, we’ve just been trying to create fast, collaborative work environments.
But here’s the kicker: this was NOT Slack’s original purpose.
Slack started as a company called Tiny Speck, one of thousands of gaming startups trying to ride the online gaming wave. Its founder, Stewart Butterfield (yes, the same guy who co-founded Flickr), had a vision. Like many self-respecting nerds, he wanted to get paid to build video games. Who wouldn’t want that job, right?
So he formed a team and started building a massively multiplayer game called Glitch. Go to the original game URL: glitchthegame.com. See where that takes you now. The best way I can describe Glitch felt like a mix between Minecraft and Super Mario, with a bit of avatar control. It had a fanbase. Its collaborative features were ahead of their time. But it didn’t work. The project failed and shut down in 2012. The source code was released publicly, and a few spin-offs have emerged—one being Odd Giants, which is still up today. If you remember Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs), it’s in that same spirit of gameplay.
But I digress.
Here’s the important part:
While building Glitch, the team ran into a problem. They needed better internal communication. Their team was distributed, and they lacked a fast, effective way to coordinate. So they built a tool—real-time messaging, searchable history, integration with GitHub and other dev tools. That tool, built to overcome a roadblock, became Slack.
They solved a problem for themselves—and that solution became the company’s future.
The obstacle became the way.
Slack (short for Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge) became one of the fastest-growing B2B tools ever, and in 2021, Salesforce acquired it for $27.7 billion—the largest tech acquisition at the time.
And Slack’s not the only story like this.
There are thousands of similar pivots in the business world.
Twitter started as a podcasting platform (Odeo).
Instagram started as a location-based check-in app (Burbn).
What you start doing is rarely what you end up doing.
So here’s my message: stop sweating the initial decision.
Whatever path you choose, it’ll probably evolve anyway. So just get started. You can aim in a general direction—like North—but that’s as precise as it gets.
The Slack founders were building software, sure—but it ended up being nothing like what they intended.
That’s how success works.
You ready for the shortcut?
Here’s 52 years of wisdom for you:
Start something. Doesn’t matter what. Then hit a major problem. Work hard to solve that problem. Once you solve it, you’ll likely have “the way.”
Chances are, if it was your problem, it’s everyone else’s too.
That’s what I believe “the obstacle is the way” really means.
Funny thing—as I write this, I just realized something about myself.
I’ve cracked the code on how to write every day.
I take a quirky thought, distill it into an idea, write it out, edit, clean it up, and publish it in a highly automated way. I take the thoughts that hit me early in the morning and get them into multiple formats—fast. When I first started, it was painful. Now I’m close to 3,000 consecutive blog posts. I never imagined building something this efficient.
Maybe this is the way.
Huh.
Dang. That idea might just set me back a few days in reflection.
Anyway—the point is this:
When you hit a barrier—rejoice.
You may have just found your way.
For Stewart Butterfield, it was a multi-billion dollar way.
But if you’re bouncing around, ricocheting off every problem without paying attention, you could be missing your true calling, the thing that will change your life forever.
