How a $30K travel disaster in Papua New Guinea became our breakthrough

I’m writing this from just outside a monastery in Nepal, and I’ve got a story that perfectly illustrates why the speed of your decision-making cycle matters more than the perfection of your initial plan.

What started as a complete travel disaster became one of our most productive weeks of the entire Permission-Less journey.

Here’s how we turned chaos into clarity using something called the OODA Loop, and why this framework might be the missing piece in your own impossible pursuits.

The Setup: When Everything Goes Wrong

Picture this: We’re headed to Papua New Guinea to film with an indigenous tribe for the Unbecoming documentary. Remote location, complex logistics, tight timeline. As we’re driving to the airport, my inbox starts flooding with delay notifications.

6-hour flight delay.

But we’re already on the way, so we decide to wait it out and get checked in. That’s when the real fun begins.

Visa problems.

The Australian visa app (required even though we weren’t connecting there) decides to have a meltdown.

Error messages 30, 40 times.

“Passport doesn’t match.” Try again. If we don’t solve this, we don’t board.

The delay actually gave us time to work through it. We got the visa.

We boarded, 6, 7 hours late, but we’re finally moving.

I lie down for a nap, thinking we’re in the clear.

The Chaos: 2 AM Airport Pandemonium

2-3 hours later: Mechanical problems. Weather. Everyone off the plane.

It’s 2 AM.

They tell us everything’s fixed, we’re ready to go, but there’s one tiny problem: the airport is closed.

No one in the tower. No one to help us actually get airborne.

Now it gets interesting.

Because the airport’s closed, they can’t tell us what’s happening.

Don’t know if we can get our bags. Don’t know if the flight’s canceled or taking off in the morning. Nothing.

Pure pandemonium.

People yelling, screaming. Felt like fights might break out. Passengers who’d been waiting 10+ hours with no answers, no hotel, no help.

Just “we don’t know, check back later.”

Meanwhile, Evan’s in Manila boarding for Papua New Guinea, and they won’t let her on because her visa hasn’t cleared yet.

The Pivot: Recognizing the Real Game

Here’s where most people would either power through stubbornly or give up completely. Instead, we ran what the military calls an OODA Loop.

Let me tell you about this framework, because it’s been the invisible engine behind every breakthrough in my career.

OODA was developed by fighter pilot John Boyd during dogfights in Korea. He discovered that in chaotic aerial combat, the pilot who could cycle through their decision-making process faster would invariably win.

Not the one with the better plane or more experience, the one who could observe, orient, decide, and act faster than their opponent.

The loop has four stages:

• Observe: Gather information about the current, changing situation

• Orient: Analyze and synthesize that information to understand the context

• Decide: Determine a course of action based on your orientation

• Act: Implement the decision and see what happens

The feedback from your action immediately becomes the observation for your next loop.

In a fast-moving world, you don’t win by having the most perfect initial plan. You win by having the fastest learning and adaptation cycle.

Our OODA Loop in Action

OBSERVE: We’re at least a day behind. Even if we solve the visa issues, move the local flights, arrange the drives, we’re looking at maybe 2-3 days with the tribe instead of 5-6.

ORIENT: The real question isn’t “can we make this work?” It’s “will we be able to create the kind of experience that allows for the depth we want for the story?” The cost was getting high for a low chance of the return we needed.

DECIDE: Pivot. Don’t just cancel, think bigger.

ACT: Evan immediately says, “I’m flying from Manila to Bali. We’re setting up an edit bay and moving the film ahead.”

The Results: Turning Setbacks into Accelerants

Within 24 hours, I’m on Airbnb finding a place in Bali that maximizes efficiency and collaboration. I find one with multiple workstations and a projector screen that comes down, basically a home cinema for reviewing footage.

Next 5 days: We edited 10-12 hours a day. Jibran and I taking shifts. We cut 20-30 minutes of the film, testing our main hypotheses about what worked and what didn’t.

The clarity was incredible.

We invited Nick and Fehren over for a screening, not for feedback, but so they could see the scope of this story and get an embodied sense of the opportunity. When everyone can think bigger, everything accelerates.

But here’s where it gets really interesting…

The Compound Effect: Multiple OODA Loops Running Simultaneously

While Evan and Jibran were editing, I found a co-working space down the road. 3-4 hours of focused time each day where I wireframed the entire Permission-Less book.

Not just the book, I started designing an entire ecosystem.

A community engine that could support people in taking action and breaking through whatever holds them back from creating their own impossible.

Then, talking with a friend about Jibran’s inspiring story, we had an idea: Why not replicate this opportunity?

There are more talented people like Jibran here in Indonesia who deserve a chance.

My friend had an entire unused office. We could find social media managers, virtual assistants, editors. We had a full floor available.

So while editing the documentary, I also:

• Got a landing page up for Muse Bali

• Created the application system

• Met with recruitment managers

• Moved Gibran into the office

Muse Bali is now operational.

We have someone there, massive potential for growth, and it happened because we were running multiple OODA loops simultaneously.

The Reframe: From Failure to Fuel

You could look at this story and focus on what we “lost”, the Papua New Guinea footage, the time with the tribe, the money spent on canceled flights.

But here’s what we actually gained:

• 20-30 minutes of edited film that gives us massive clarity on the story

• Complete wireframe for the Permission-Less book that has me more fired up than ever

• Operational Bali office with incredible growth potential

• Proof that our OODA Loop approach works under pressure

This is what happens when you run OODA loops constantly.

Every setback becomes data. Every obstacle becomes an opportunity to think bigger and move faster.

The traditional approach would have been to research Papua New Guinea for months, create the perfect plan, and then hope everything went right. Instead, we took action, gathered real-time information, and adapted faster than the situation could break us.

Your Turn: Running Your Own OODA Loops

The question isn’t whether you’ll face setbacks in your own impossible pursuits.

The question is: How fast can you turn those setbacks into accelerants?

Where in your current projects are you spending too much time planning and not enough time testing? What assumptions are you making that you could validate (or invalidate) with a simple experiment this week?

Remember: Velocity beats perfection. The goal isn’t to avoid failure, it’s to fail faster than your competition can succeed.

What’s Next: Nepal and Strategic Storyfinding

We’re now in Nepal for a few days of Storyfinding before heading to the monastery. The next update will take you through how we’re leveraging this time and the strategic thinking we’re using to maximize the story potential.

This permission-less book, and ecosystem, will be all about these mental models, how to use them, and how to create your own remarkable.

Each model wrapped in story, sharing how I made a film with somebody remarkable and world-changing and what I learned from them.

• Patrick

ps - The irony isn’t lost on me that our biggest breakthrough happened when we stopped trying to control the outcome and started controlling our response time. Sometimes the best plan is the one that adapts fastest to reality.