At Dreamforce 2025 I saw that the work that justified my role was being absorbed into a machine. So I did what this framework exists for. I ran the system.
The system is four questions, one for each of the four Forces: Probability, Time, Extrapolation and Consistency. This episode shows them working together in real time, on a decision I couldn’t afford to get wrong: AI was being positioned to automate exactly the configuration and workflow-building that administrators like me performed every day.
Probability asked what action would most dramatically shift my odds: not another admin certification, but the Platform Developer I credential, so I’d be a hybrid instead of a single-function professional waiting to be automated. Time named the price, about ninety days that no heroic weekend could compress. Extrapolation said why it couldn’t wait. Consistency paid for it before the kids woke up, during lunch, after bedtime, through the holidays.
Around six weeks in, nothing made sense. What kept me going wasn’t inspiration. It was data: confusion, confusion, confusion, then clarity, and the knowledge that feelings are a lagging indicator of volume. In January 2026 I passed on the first attempt. The episode ends with the book’s invitation: you are not broken, and you never were. You need a track built for the vehicle you actually have.
Chapters (each time opens the video at that point)
0:00 Dreamforce, October 2025
0:35 The weather that’s coming
1:16 I ran the system: four questions
1:31 Probability: the single move that carries more weight
2:26 Time: ninety days you can’t compress
2:56 Extrapolation: a trajectory calculation
3:28 Consistency: the vote was cast
3:50 Six weeks in: “Perhaps this is where your ceiling is”
4:07 Feelings are a lagging indicator of volume
4:33 January 2026: the ninth certification
5:09 Direction and Engine, mapped onto the story
5:36 What is misaligned?
5:59 A track built for the vehicle you actually have
6:33 One audit. One protocol. One vote.
The book: The Spiky Profile: Operating Manual for High-Capability Minds That Stall, by Luis A. Salazar.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0HCXHQ1T3
Other retailers: https://books2read.com/thespikyprofile
Free PDF, The Architect’s Field Guide: https://www.thespikyprofile.com/p/field-guides
Series: The Spiky Profile, Episode 3 of 35 (the last of the Introduction; Part I begins with Episode 4). Previous: The Systems I Built for My Deficits Made Everyone Faster. Next: Evolution’s Oldest Trick: A Tiny Edge, Repeated.
Watch the series in order: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLScvmew9JykM
A note on stories: as in the book, the first-person examples in this series are true in substance and may be adjusted, rounded or combined to teach the idea clearly.