April 17, 2025
The Universal Trilemma Triangle wasn’t born from academic ambition or a strategic research project. It emerged from something far more familiar: the quiet frustration of trying to do too much with too little.
The earliest seed of the idea came during my time building a product in the film industry — a space already filled with competing demands. Every decision felt like a negotiation between time, cost, and quality. I kept asking myself:
“Why can’t I do all three well? Why does something always slip?”
The feeling wasn’t just professional. It spilled over into life itself — health vs. ambition vs. relationships. Everything felt like a trade-off. And yet, nobody seemed to talk about this openly. It was always framed as a personal failure, a lack of balance, or poor time management.
One night, staring at a whiteboard covered in scribbles about deadlines, team needs, and product priorities, I drew a triangle. Each point represented something I wanted badly — speed, affordability, quality. I traced lines between them and realized: I could only ever fully sustain two. The third had to bend.
It wasn’t just a feeling anymore. It had a shape.
A few days later, that shape reminded me of something I had come across years earlier — the Blockchain Scalability Trilemma.
That led to a deeper exploration. I started digging into other models:
All of them pointed to the same core insight: three desirable goals often cannot coexist without structural tension.
But none of them framed it as a universal pattern.
None of them had a name for the shared experience behind them.