Make Something Heavy - NFHN Reader

Gold is solid. Wood is dense. And back when we still printed things on paper, a heavy stapler was a luxury.1

If something is heavy, we assume it matters. And often, it does. Weight signals quality, durability, presence, permanence.

Even the objects we choose reflect this. At first, we buy cheap, lightweight furniture—easy to build, easy to trash. But eventually, we want weight. A solid oak table. A leather armchair. Something built to last. Heavy things comfort us—a weighted blanket stills the body, a heavy door makes a home feel secure.

Winners of major awards almost always say the same thing as they lift the trophy: ‘Wow! It’s so heavy.’ As though the weight itself validates the achievement. Simple logic: Light achievements beget light awards. Heavy achievements beget heavy awards.

We accept this in the physical world.

But online, we forget.

The modern makers’ machine does not want you to create heavy things. It runs on the internet—powered by social media, fueled by mass appeal, and addicted to speed. It thrives on spikes, scrolls, and screenshots. It resists weight and avoids friction. It does not care for patience, deliberation, or anything but production.

It doesn’t care what you create, only that you keep creating. Make more. Make faster. Make lighter. (Make slop if you have to.) Make something that can be consumed in a breath and discarded just as quickly. Heavy things take time. And here, time is a tax. And so, we oblige—everyone does.

We create more than ever, but it weighs nothing.

AI now promises results without the reckoning, but frictionless creation leads to weightless rewards. No one dreams of merely pushing a button to generate their magnum opus. The output matters, but the intention, the struggle, the care is what makes it count — what gives it weight.2

Of course, there’s a range from light to heavy, and not all light things are bad. An entire economy thrives on lightness. Memes, breaking news, and celebrity drama shape culture in spades. But movement isn’t meaning. A million views doesn’t make a pound of significance. Light things shape culture, but rarely shape us.

Creation isn’t just about output. It’s a process of becoming. The best work shapes the maker as much as the audience. A founder builds a startup to prove they can. A writer wrestles an idea into clarity. You don’t just create heavy things. You become someone who can.

So many creators start in the shallow pool of some algorithm’s grip—until, inevitably, they go searching for something heavier. From short-form to long-form. From building in public to locking in to solitude, obsession, deep work. To create a book, a film, an album, a company—something that stands alone.

No matter how many you stack, Tweets and TikToks don’t add up to something heavy. They don’t solidify. At best, they’re a pile of snowflakes, intricate yet ephemeral. Beautiful while they’re here, gone before they hit the ground.3

Substack, with its many virtues, finds itself at a crossroads — I’d put it in the midweight creation zone (if used well). Writers stack posts, building up a library of words that starts to feel substantial. It’s good that long-form posts can go viral faster and stick around longer. But it’s still not quite as heavy as writers’ loftiest dreams, at least not yet. Even the most successful Substackers, those who’ve turned newsletters into brands and businesses, start pondering their endgame.

They want to make one really, really good thing. One truly heavy thing. A book. A manifesto. A movie. A media company. A monument. — A masterpiece.4

Not just for the prestige or the money, but for the proverbial "F-U" to ephemerality. For the way it anchors them to something lasting while giving them the freedom to breathe. For the way it sticks in the hearts and minds of other people who encounter it too.

Heavy projects are the lifeblood of creative fulfillment — and creative longevity. And for now, no platform truly offers that kind of weight on its own. Platforms are built to amplify, not anchor.5

Light mode is fast and iterative, producing work that’s quick to make but just as quick to fade. It’s the mode of rapid experiments, side quests, and prolific posting. Heavy mode is slower, deliberate, and intentional (often hermit mode). It’s the mode of deep work that builds over time and carries lasting weight.

Some go straight for the heavy: building the billion-dollar startup, writing the world-changing book, recording the defining album. No pit stops. Or, in less relative terms: things that will stand on their own and stand the test of time. Weight is lindy.6 Others build up to the heavy things: essays before the book, short films before the feature, prototypes before the big product (maybe a few silly ‘GPT wrappers’ before the serious one). Lightness has its virtues — it helps keep you fresh, get in the reps, and work up to the heavy thing.

At any given time, you’re either pre–heavy thing or post–heavy thing. You’ve either made something weighty already, or you haven’t. Pre–heavy thing people are still searching, experimenting, iterating. Post–heavy thing people have crossed the threshold. They’ve made something of substance—something that commands respect, inspires others, and becomes a foundation to build on. And it shows. They move with confidence and calm. (But this feeling doesn’t always last forever.)7 Your gut knows what state you’re in. And the cycle repeats.

No one wants to stay in light mode forever. Sooner or later, everyone gravitates toward heavy mode—toward making something with weight. Your life’s work will be heavy. Finding the balance of light and heavy is the game.8

Note: heavy doesn’t have to mean “big.” Heavy can be small, niche, hard to scale. What I’m talking about is more like density. It’s about what is defining, meaningful, durable.

Everyone calls themselves a creator now. It’s the default title of the moment, the identity of an era. But does everyone who claims it actually feel it? Do they know the deep, anchored satisfaction of having made something that carries weight?

Telling everyone they’re a creator has only fostered a new strain of imposter syndrome. Being called a creator doesn’t make you one or make you feel like one; creating something with weight does. When you’ve made something heavy—something that stands on its own—you don’t need validation. You just know, because you feel its weight in your hands. And that weight is its own reward.

It’s not that most people can’t make heavy things. It’s that they don’t notice they aren’t. Lightness has its virtues—it pulls us in, subtly, innocently, whispering, 'Just do things.' The machine rewards movement, so we keep going, collecting badges. One day, we look up and realize we’ve been running in place.

And then you feel it: a quiet, gnawing hollowness that, for all the making, nothing has truly been made. Why does it feel bad to stop posting after weeks of consistency? Because the force of your work instantly drops to zero. It was all motion, no mass—momentum without weight. 99% dopamine, near-zero serotonin, and no trace of oxytocin. This is the contemporary creator’s dilemma—the contemporary generation’s dilemma.

You don’t feel like a true creator because you haven’t made anything heavy, and deep down, you know light things don’t count. Your output is high, but your imprint is low. You ship, but you do not build. You call yourself a creator, but what have you made that could survive a month offline? A year? A decade? If you stopped posting tomorrow, would anything remain? Creating for 24-hour cycles isn’t freedom, leverage, or legacy—it’s just renting out your time.

Creative people are restless souls, forever chasing the horizon until they’ve made something substantial. We spend our lives crafting weighted blankets for ourselves—something heavy enough to anchor our ambition and quiet our minds.

Weight is tangible in the physical world—a place we should care about and create more for than we have of late, even if it’s harder to scale. Working with your hands, with weight, shape, and dimension, holds an abundance of untapped virtue and value. Online, by nature, weight is harder to find, harder to hold on to, and only getting harder in a world where it feels like anyone can make anything.

But it is just as imperative.

People ask, "What are you working on?" They’re really asking: What’s your endgame? (It’s one of my favorite questions, too.)

My answer is simple, but not easy:

Make something heavy.