Being a little too early

There’s a particular kind of awkwardness reserved for people who show up to the future before everyone else. You walk into the room, full of excitement, waving around something inventive and useful — and leadership looks at you like you’ve brought a ferret to a wedding.

You’re not wrong. You’re just… early.

When innovation looks like a mistake

Last half, I partnered with an engineer to create a codemod prompt that identified and relabeled accessibility defects in code. I thought: here is a way for language models to help us catch barriers and make products better for real people! Here is exciting work to make life better for real people, to make our product more accessible and delightful (and to avoid major penalties in countries with hot-incoming regulations), and a way to scale both content designers and engineers!

The response I got was not “Thank you for future-proofing our product.” It was, effectively:

Why would a content designer ever do that? This isn't important work. Focus on something else.

This work became a line item against me in performance review. And because performance review is a game with real consequences, that stung. Six months later, I'm watching other people get praised for similar work. Same idea. Same outcomes. New timing.

It turns out the line between “too soon” and “brilliant” is usually just the calendar.

Innovating without permission

This half, I built an entire design system for prompt design — solo. I built a wiki that structures cognition, not screens. I vibe coded a prompt generator that auto-assembles reusable components. I rewrote our brand voice prompting strategy and scaled it to another product.

Not someday. Not aspirationally. Done.

But instead of feeling triumphant, I feel like someone whispering secrets about a world that hasn’t finished downloading yet. Being ahead means constantly being told to slow down by people who don’t see the road in front of them.

It’s disorienting. It’s lonely. And sometimes it’s terrifying.

The pioneer penalty

There is a real risk embedded in innovation: the risk that the wrong person evaluates it before they understand it.

When your manager isn’t ready for what you’re doing, your work can look chaotic, off-track, or irrelevant. You don’t get the applause. You get the penalty box.

It’s wild — I can literally track which ideas were “bad” when I proposed them and “essential strategy” the moment someone else with more proximity to power says them.

And yes, some of the disconnect likely comes from plain bias: my southern accent, returning from medical leave, a temporary loss of context being mistaken for lack of intelligence. When you already feel like you have to prove you belong there, being told your best thinking is a liability can feel like a shove back down the hill you just climbed.

Creating what doesn’t exist yet

Content design is evolving. We’re not just writing strings — we’re architecting how AI understands humans. That shift is still blurry for many. Designers who treat prompts as a craft, a system, a design surface — we’re building the thing before the job description recognizes it.

Being early means:

• You build structures no one asked for yet

• You speak a language no one has translated yet

• You solve problems no one has officially acknowledged yet

• You get questioned instead of celebrated

  
  

And you keep going anyway.

In praise of the awkward visionaries

Pioneers are inconvenient. We don’t wait for permission. We prototype possible futures instead of performing the present. So we make others uncomfortable. Especially the people who plan to take credit when the organization catches up.

But innovation does not happen on-time. It happens when someone decides to make the thing they wish existed.

Here is the truth I’m trying to hold: the discomfort of being early is temporary.The regret of silencing your genius is permanent.

A final note to the too-soon crew

If you are a little ahead of your time, you will probably spend a while being misunderstood.

But eventually the future arrives — and suddenly you’re not the one who’s awkward. You’re the one with a head start.

Keep going. Keep making the things no one asked for yet. Leadership will catch up when they’re ready.

And when they do, they’ll discover you’re already working on what comes next.