Why I build toys
People assume the playful stuff is what you do when the real work is done. I've found the opposite. The toys are where the ideas get pressure-tested before they're worth taking seriously.
A toy has no stakes, so you'll actually finish it. And finishing teaches you things a plan never will — where the friction is, what's fun, what nobody actually wants.
- Toys ship in an afternoon. Products take months. Learn cheap.
- If a toy is boring to use, the "serious" version will be too.
- The constraint of "make it fun" is a great filter for "make it good".
Seriousness is a tone, not a virtue. Build the playful thing and find out if it has legs.
So go poke at the tools. Some are useful, some are silly. The line between them is thinner than anyone admits.
You're not the bottleneck. Your loop is.
When output stalls, the instinct is to work harder. But you're almost never the slow part — the slow part is the step in your process you keep doing by hand.
Read →The machine that makes the machine
The highest-leverage thing you can build isn't the product. It's the system that produces the product — over and over, while you sleep.
Read →