Make Useful Things
What makes something worth making?
We are very, very good at making things.
Maybe too good.
Look around almost any store. Scroll through almost any marketplace. Open the drawer where you keep the objects you don't quite know what to do with.
Things are... e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e.
Some are ingenious.
Some are delightful.
Some are extraordinarily useful.
And an astounding amount of it is just... stuff.
WHAT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT
Even a thoroughly unnecessary object can represent an astonishing feat of human capability.
Someone conceived it.
Someone designed it.
Someone selected the material.
Someone built tooling.
Some factory manufactured thousands of them.
Other factories produced the packaging.
Photographers photographed it. Copywriters described it. Software listed it. Advertisers promoted it.
Trucks, ships, warehouses, computers, and people moved it around the planet.
Then somebody clicked BUY NOW.
That entire extraordinary system worked.
The question is whether the thing at the end of it was worth making.
WE HAVE REMOVED A LOT OF THE FRICTION
Not long ago, getting a new physical product into production demanded enormous resources.
Today an individual inventor can sketch an idea, model it on a computer, 3D-print a prototype, find a manufacturer on another continent, raise money online, sell through a global marketplace, and have the finished object delivered to customers around the world.
That is truly astonishing.
It has democratized invention in ways earlier generations of creators could barely have imagined.
But every reduction in the difficulty of asking Can we make it? makes another question more important:
Should we make it?
BE USEFUL
Arnold Schwarzenegger titled his 2023 book Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life.
The phrase came from advice his father repeated to him:
“Be useful, Arnold.”
The book applies that idea to a life: do something worthwhile, develop yourself, work hard, help others.
I like the instruction.
But I keep thinking about one small variation.
What if we asked the same thing of the objects we create?
Not only:
Be useful.
But:
Make useful things.
WHAT EARNS THE RIGHT TO EXIST?
Every physical product asks something of the world.
Raw materials have to come from somewhere.
Energy is used to transform them.
Factories, machines, and people make the product.
It gets packaged.
Transported.
Stored.
Sold.
Delivered.
And eventually, when we're finished with it, it has to go somewhere.
That does not mean every invention needs to save humanity.
A useful thing can make a dangerous job safer.
Help a farmer grow more food.
Use less water.
Save ten minutes every morning.
Prevent an expensive mistake.
Make a tool easier to hold.
Help two pieces fit together.
Make a child laugh.
Make something beautiful.
Enable someone to see better, therefor work, or learn.
A product can be wonderfully frivolous and still earn its place in someone's life.
Useful does not have to mean serious.
But usefulness does imply an exchange.
For all the resources required to bring a thing into the world, it ought to give something back.
A SIMPLE TEST
Before moving from idea to production, ask:
What does this actually do for someone?
Who benefits?
Is that benefit meaningful?
Could it be simpler, longer-lasting, easier to repair, or less wasteful?
And perhaps the most revealing question:
If nobody ever made this, would anybody miss it?
That is not a test meant to kill creativity.
Quite the opposite.
Make ridiculous prototypes.
Try things.
Build contraptions.
Follow hunches.
Create objects nobody understands yet.
Some of the world's genuinely useful things began as unlikely ideas.
The point is not to make invention more cautious, but more considerate.
It is to make production more thoughtful.
JUNK IS A DESIGN DECISION, TOO
We tend to think of waste as something that happens at the end.
A product becomes obsolete, unwanted, broken, or unfashionable, and somebody throws it away.
But much of that outcome was determined much earlier.
When the product was conceived.
When its useful life was decided.
When materials were selected.
When repair was made easy — or impossible.
When replacement became cheaper than maintenance.
When somebody decided that another object needed to exist.
That means usefulness is not merely a feature added to a finished design.
It belongs near the beginning.
THE WORLD DOESN'T NEED FEWER IDEAS
Quite the opposite.
We need more ideas.
Better ideas.
Odd ideas.
Ideas from people who have not traditionally been invited to invent things.
Ideas for enormous problems and ideas for tiny irritations.
Ideas that make lives healthier, safer, easier, richer, happier, more independent, more productive—or simply more interesting.
But our ability to manufacture things is now so extraordinary that perhaps we should develop an equally strong ability to discern what deserves to be manufactured.
Before How do we make it?
Before Can we patent it?
Before What will it cost?
Before How many can we sell?
Ask one more question:
What makes this worth making?
A useful thing should earn the resources required to bring it into the world. In other words: What does this thing give back in return? Value is not always money.
Then, invent it.
Improve it.
Simplify it.
Make it beautiful.
Make it responsive... and responsible.
And, whenever you can—
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