I recently saw the following YouTube video: Make More Pointless Things and it has been living rent-free in my mind for the last week. Please have a look if you have 10 minutes to spare. It’s quite interesting and fun. This post won’t make a lot of sense without watching the video.

What’s New About The Message?

We probably already know the message behind “Make More Pointless Things”. It’s basically active learning by building stuff. It’s nothing new.

While the message isn’t new, Steve Gardner’s implementation of the principle felt refreshing to me.

Typically we ask people to make clones of existing projects for learning, like clones of Twitter/Facebook/Flappy Bird. Meanwhile, he encouraged pointless things that won’t have cloning tutorials on YouTube.

The underlying message is that you can learn by building anything, not just clones of existing projects. Don’t let the utility of the project stop you from doing it. If it’s fun, go for it. Curiosity FTW.

Make Small Things Without Product Value

I love how the pointless things Steve made were small and specific: a stick drawer or a burning flame. Nothing huge or meaningful like a distributed system or social media, and he still learned plenty of stuff.

I had fun ideas for projects many times before but didn’t pursue them cause I couldn’t see any product value. The ones with product value seemed big and intimidating, so I never bothered starting them cause I knew I wouldn’t have time to finish them. It was my loss in the end since I didn’t build anything and hence didn’t learn anything either.

This video is a reminder that it’s fine to build small fun projects for learning and exploring. While a product-oriented mindset is good when starting a new business or start-up, it shouldn’t stop you from learning.

Don’t let product-oriented mindset stop you from learning.

If you aim at nothing, you will hit every time

The video had many examples of Steve’s pointless projects: stick drawer, curly wave drawer, zig-zag drawer, and flame. He built them for fun and to learn and in the end, noticed they had similarities that could be packaged into a library. He didn’t start the journey to create an SVG library, but somehow that’s what he wandered into.

That’s the beauty of pointless projects. We don’t know what it will lead to.

I always complain that I don’t have any great ideas for the product/start-up/business. Well duh! That’s because I haven’t been building anything! Building lots of small projects increases your range in multiple topics. Then eventually you can innovate by combining what you have learned with lateral thinking.

This also has the benefit that eventually when you think of a great product idea, you will have enough knowledge to prototype it quickly rather than get intimidated by it.

Conclusion: Make More Pointless Things

I would like to start building more things. I love learning new things after all. I have let “What’s the point?” hold me back for a long time. Let’s not do that going forward. It’s a depressing way of living: finding a product value for every idea.

I already have some ideas: having a ball bounce in a box (I am curious how image drawing works) or figuring out which restaurants I visited the most in the last year (I know the Google Timeline shows the data but it’s sorted chronologically instead of frequency of visit).

I am also trying to be practical. I don’t have infinite time so I won’t be able to build every random idea I get. I will have to prioritize somehow. Small and fun gets more priority than big and boring.

I will obviously keep you all posted about my adventures. If I managed to build anything interesting, expect a blog post. If you were inspired to build something pointless after watching the video, let me know in the comments.

Let’s make more pointless things ✊!!