The inventor was tired. Not the kind of tired a nap fixes. The kind that hums behind your eyes. The kind that lives in your calendar. The kind that builds up when what you build keeps getting ignored.

His workshop was full. His head was fuller. Like a browser with 47 tabs open, one of them playing music he couldn’t find.

“I don’t understand,” he told the mentor. “I keep improving everything. More features. More control. Smarter tech. But every time, people hesitate. They walk away.”

The mentor didn’t answer. He handed the inventor a cinder block.

“Hold this.”

The inventor gripped it. His arms dipped.

“Strong?” the mentor asked.

“Yes. And heavy.”

“It used to weigh a hundred pounds,” the mentor said. “Solid concrete. Too heavy to lift. Too much effort to work with. It sat there. Impressive, but unusable.”

He ran his hand along the block’s hollow core.

“Then someone got smarter. They carved out space. Brought it down to thirty pounds. Still strong, just usable.”

He paused for a moment.

“It didn’t become valuable by getting heavier. It became valuable by getting lighter.”

Then the mentor pulled an old BlackBerry from a drawer. Buttons everywhere. Menus inside of menus. Alerts that needed a manual to manage.

“Brilliant device. If you were willing to fight with it.”

He placed a modern smartphone next to it. One screen. No instructions.

“This one didn’t win because it was smarter,” he said. “It won because it removed friction. It didn’t give people more to figure out. It gave them less to think about.”

The inventor stared at the two devices. Then at the block.

“So… I don’t need a better system,” he said.

The mentor shook his head.

“You need a lighter one.”

He leaned in slightly.

“If your thing only works when you’re fully rested, laser-focused, and double-caffeinated… it’s not ready. It’s fragile.”

The inventor looked around. At the clutter. The complexity. The brilliant-but-burdensome things he’d built.

He walked to the whiteboard. Crossed off a project.

Then another.

And another.

“You’re not giving up,” the mentor said. “You’re hollowing out the block.”

That night, the inventor went home early.

No urgent emails. No spirals of guilt.

He sat on the floor. His kid handed him a toy they made together. It wasn’t complicated. It didn’t do much.

But it worked.

And in that moment, the inventor saw what he had missed for years.

It’s not how much you carry that makes you strong.

It’s how much you don’t have to.