Cathedral thinking and the slow work of building Socialheads

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we build things that matter, and how easily we slip into short term work that disappears.

There’s this idea called cathedral thinking. Roman Krznaric writes about it when he talks about long-term vision and the willingness to work on things you may never see finished. Greta Thunberg uses the same phrase in a different way, saying we need to lay foundations now even if we don’t yet know what the finished structure looks like. I like that both versions exist. One focuses on the people who hold the big vision. The other focuses on the workers who show up and keep building even when the outcome is still uncertain.

I’ve loved tech since I was a kid. I used to take apart my computer just to see how it all worked. Later I spent years on digital projects. Some were huge, months of work from whole teams, and then they were cancelled or forgotten. All that effort just vanished. And then at other times a small, almost accidental project ends up changing someone’s life. That contrast always stays with me and I still don’t fully know what to make of it.

It makes me think about how people used to build things over decades. Not in a romantic way, but in a very practical, human way. Someone had the vision, the drawings, the calculations, knowing the whole thing might take centuries. They knew they wouldn’t see it finished, but they set the direction anyway. And then generations of workers came after them, each doing their part, each trusting that they were contributing to something bigger even if they would never stand in the completed building. I find that combination of long-term vision and the quiet faith of the people doing the work genuinely inspiring. It feels almost missing today.

And oddly enough that’s what starting Socialheads felt like. You step into it without certainty. You don’t know how it will unfold or whether you’ll ever see the full impact. You don’t get a neat blueprint. You just feel deeply that something needs building here, even if you can’t yet describe the final shape. So you start by trying to understand the problem properly. You work within the constraints you have. You push at the parts that need to change. You try to create the right conditions so the work can grow into whatever it needs to become.

That’s where the cathedral idea makes sense to me. Not because we lack structure or direction, but because meaningful work often outlives the people who start it. You do the early foundations knowing others might be the ones who see the full thing. And I’m alright with that. If the work we do now ends up helping the people who come long after, even if I never witness the outcome, then that feels like the right kind of work to be doing.