Where Do You Get Your Inspiration?

My brain never shuts down. Even on walks, even on vacation, even at 3 AM when I should be sleeping. It’s constantly making connections, noticing patterns, thinking about problems I didn’t know I cared about. That’s probably unhealthy. I should probably try a digital detox sometime.

But here’s the thing: I genuinely love what I do. So even when my mind won’t quiet down, it doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels like passion.

“It’s my passion.”

🔍 Where does it come from, though? The actual spark?

For me, it’s never one big moment. It’s a conversation with a colleague about a problem they’re wrestling with. It’s watching my daughter figure something out for the first time. It’s a late-night talk with my wife about nothing in particular. These moments don’t announce themselves as significant. They just are. And somewhere in the middle of them, my brain starts turning.

I’ve learned not to dismiss these moments anymore. Early in my career, I would have said “that’s not my problem” or “that’s someone else’s job.” But somewhere along the way, I started taking these small triggers seriously. A colleague mentions they’re struggling with their workflow in forensic analysis, and suddenly I’m lying in bed at 2 AM thinking about a way to optimize their process. These aren’t requests. They’re just… observations. But my brain treats them like challenges waiting to be solved. Some become production grade software solutions, some never make it to being deployed anywhere.

Take this blog, for example.

I never planned to write anything online. Then I started using LinkedIn more, wanting to connect with people in my field. That led to wanting a place to share longer thoughts (LinkedIn Articles exist, I know, but it was not personal enough for me). So I needed a blog.

I didn’t have to look far for inspiration. Peter Steinberger, founder of OpenClaw and currently everywhere on the news, has a site called steipete.me that caught my attention immediately. Clean, personal, understated. It made me think: maybe I could do something similar.

But instead of going the easy way, fork the repository, sign up for Vercel, pick a domain, and be done in an afternoon, I wanted to create something myself. Was that smart? From a time saving perspective obviously not. But creating something means putting a piece of your own into it. Like in the old days when my dad tried to repair an old device instead of buying a new one. At some point it became personal to him, and the joy when it worked out was worth the effort.

Of course you can spare time but where is the fun in that?

So I dusted off my GitHub account and started experimenting.

What followed was months of trial and error. - I’m kidding ;-) This blog is completely vibe coded in one evening with some features added later on. It took about sixty deployments in a test repository (private), sometimes very minor bugs or things I didn’t like. After I was done testing, I started a fresh repository. That became my website, my place to share my thoughts.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Since I was storing posts as Markdown files on GitHub, I needed a way to write and format them properly. But no existing tool fit my requirements for my Markdown files.

So I built a custom Markdown editor Post-Generator. Nothing fancy and spectacular but it fits my needs. Something completely unnecessary when you ask somebody else because I could just copy the old .md file and exchange the content. But where is the fun? Having a nice and clean interface lets my brain rest for a minute because it’s like a white canvas. Completely fresh and no noise.

Again, I had created another solution for a problem I didn’t actually have before. Was it necessary? No. Was it useful? Yes. Did it teach me something? Absolutely.

Looking back, I realize this is a pattern in my life. I’m not satisfied with simply solving a problem. I want to understand the problem deeply, build my own solution, and learn something in the process. Sometimes this makes me more effective. Sometimes it’s just procrastination dressed up as thoroughness. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.

⏸️ When is it enough? When am I satisfied with what I have?

It’s a good question. The answer isn’t simple.

It has something to do with the society we live in, the way we were raised, the values our parents handed down without even trying. The values you share with your partner. The quiet expectations we absorb without noticing.

I think about this more than I probably should. We live in a world that constantly tells us to build more, optimize more, ship more. But what are we actually building toward?

We solve everyone else’s problems while ignoring our own. We build elaborate systems for others while our own homes fall apart. There’s something both noble and tragic about this.

For me, it’s not about stopping. I don’t think I could even if I tried. It’s about being intentional. Choosing which problems to chase.

Recognizing when I’m solving problems for the satisfaction of solving them, versus solving problems because they actually matter.

This post itself was born from something small. I wanted to say thank you to Peter Steinberger for inspiring this blog (its look and feel). That’s it. Gratitude for a stranger’s work, manifested in my own small creation.

But as I wrote, another layer emerged. I started thinking about why I do what I do. Why I can’t let things go. Why I keep building and tweaking and improving even when the incremental gains become negligible. It’s the Pareto principle, or the 80-20 rule. 80% of the progress is achieved with 20% of effort. It’s the last 20% that needs 80% of effort, making the last 20% the hardest to achieve.

When you think about it, many problems in policing today are solved with 20% of effort (sometimes even less). In the end we have solutions that remind me of alpha-releases of video games. A lot of bugs, many features missing but you still paid full price. (I don’t remember when I last played games in my life^^).

In an area where the outcome of your work can decide between life and death of a person in critical situations, 20% of effort is never enough. You need to go all in to make a change. For yourself and for others.

That’s why we can’t stop innovating and improving our workflows. It’s crucial to society and we owe it to the people that we try to achieve 100% in all investigations. It’s hard because criminals deploy their resources more effectively. They don’t ask for permissions, they do no matter the costs.

Maybe that’s where the best inspiration comes from. Not from searching for it. From paying attention to the people and moments that quietly change the way we think. From being open to problems that don’t belong to us. From building something, anything, to honor the things that matter.

I’m still trying to figure out the balance. The line between curiosity and obsession. Between passion and burnout. Between building for others and building for myself.

But here’s what I know: the brain that won’t shut down, the patterns nobody else sees, the solutions nobody asked for, that’s not a curse. That’s just how some of us are wired to care. And in a field where going all-in isn’t optional, where 100% isn’t a stretch goal but a responsibility, that restlessness becomes a gift.

So I keep going. Still inspired.