the mad blog

I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes someone actually care about something.

I’ve been coaching my son’s soccer team, and he’s the youngest out there. And he’s a bit of a wildman. He’s chasing kids instead of the ball, squirting water on his friends mid-game, fully in it… just not always in the way you’d expect.

But here’s the thing. He’s actually really good.

You can see it in flashes. The way he moves. The way he reads things without trying. It’s all there. So of course, my instinct is to try to direct it. Focus. Get in position. Pay attention. All the structure stuff.

Then I came across something about how kids learn soccer in other countries. It’s not drills first. It’s not structure first. They fall in love with the game first.

They’re playing in the street. They always have a ball at their feet. They’re in it constantly, without being told to be. And then later, the structure comes in. The coaching, the positioning, the refinement. But by that point, they already care.

That really stuck with me.

Because it’s kind of the same with what I do. We talk a lot about structure when it comes to websites, and it matters. How things are organized, what gets seen first, how someone moves through it. That’s what drives decisions.

But if there’s nothing there to fall in love with first, none of that really lands.

No one stays long enough to follow the structure if they’re not pulled in at the start.

That part isn’t about doing more. It’s about building something with a point of view. A feeling. A presence. Something that makes someone want to be there.

Then the structure does its job. It guides them. It supports the experience. It gets them where they need to go. But it’s not the thing that starts it.

I think that’s the piece a lot of people miss.